The Ranchos Penitas West 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; warmer
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Mostly 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.
Ranchos Penitas West’s center stands about 500 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 400 ft to 630 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows El Pico Clay (claystone), from the Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 52×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old. About 0.4 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 Ranchos Penitas West reaches the Gulf of America by way of Santa Isabel Creek and the Rio Grande: about 380 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 Ranchos Penitas West; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ranchos Penitas West 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 Ranchos Penitas West 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 southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
