The El Cenizo 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
24° on Nov. 15, 1908, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is 29° in 1920.
El Cenizo’s center stands about 390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 340 ft to 500 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Terrace deposits (sand), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 El Cenizo reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rio Grande: about 350 river miles.
Lake on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake.
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 El Cenizo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
El Cenizo has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 101° in August; winter nights fall to about 47° in January. About 21 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 El Cenizo normally reaches 77° and falls to 56°. The record high is 96°, in 1903; the record low 28°, in 1908. The most rain on this date, 0.46 in, fell in 1920.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 from the Laredo Area threaded record (Laredo International Airport, 13 miles north, 100 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
