The Monahans 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
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
7° on Nov. 14, 1976, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is 15° in 1950.
Monahans’s center stands about 2,720 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,670 ft to 2,740 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
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 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.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Chemical. 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.
Sand. 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 Monahans reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Pecos and the Rio Grande: about 920 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake and Amistad Reservoir.
290 miles of the trip are on the Pecos.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Monahans; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Monahans has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in June; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 11 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Monahans normally reaches 69° and falls to 39°. The record high is 84°, in 2006; the record low 7°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.56 in, fell in 2004.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Wink Faa Airport, 11 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
