The El Paso 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.
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11° on Nov. 14, 1976, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1879. Next is 15° in 1880.
El Paso’s center stands about 3,730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,700 ft to 4,720 ft, a difference of 1,020 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is North Franklin Mountain, about 7,120 ft, 10 miles north.
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 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 497 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Quartzite, sandstone-mudstone. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, sand. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 0.7 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 El Paso reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rio Grande: about 1,240 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake and Amistad Reservoir.
640 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 Paso; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
El Paso has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in June; winter nights fall to about 34° in December. About 9 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 El Paso normally reaches 68° and falls to 42°. The record high is 83°, in 2025; the record low 11°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.85 in, fell in 2004.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1879 from the El Paso Area threaded record (El Paso International Airport, 7 miles east-northeast, 210 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
