The Fort Hancock 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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12° on Nov. 14, 1976, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1966. Next is 18° in 2012.
Fort Hancock’s center stands about 3,580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,520 ft to 3,850 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Campo Grande Mountain, about 4,250 ft, 8 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sand sheet deposits, from the Holocene, less than 12,000 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 9×. 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.
Fine-detrital, sand. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million 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 Fort Hancock reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rio Grande: about 1,190 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake and Amistad Reservoir.
590 miles of the trip are on the Rio Grande.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fort Hancock; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fort Hancock has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in June; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. About 8 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fort Hancock normally reaches 71° and falls to 36°. The record high is 83°, in 2001; the record low 12°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.47 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1966 at Fort Hancock 8 SSE, 10 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
