The Crane plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
87° on Nov. 17, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1928. Next is 87° in 2025.
Crane’s center stands about 2,600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,510 ft to 2,710 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is King Mountain, about 3,140 ft, 9 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Caliche deposits (chemical), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 33×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Chemical. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 208 to 247 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Claystone, limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units along the line are not listed.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Crane reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Pecos and the Rio Grande: about 850 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake and Amistad Reservoir.
270 miles of the trip are on the Rio Grande.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Crane; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Crane has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in June; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 12 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Crane normally reaches 69° and falls to 44°. The record high is 86°, in 2025; the record low 14°, in 1929. The most rain on this date, 0.12 in, fell in 1991.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1928 at Crane, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
