The Pena 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
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
3.20 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1892. The next wettest, 2.69 inches, fell in 2003.
Pena’s center stands about 180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 150 ft to 330 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Jackson Group, undivided (clay), from the Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 38 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.
Clay. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 38 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 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: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 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 Pena reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Arroyo Grande and the Rio Grande: about 250 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pena; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pena has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 99° in July; winter nights fall to about 45° in January. About 22 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Pena normally reaches 79° and falls to 55°. The record high is 94°, in 1985; the record low 27°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.56 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Rio Grande City, 10 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
