The Sandoval 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
3.25 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1962. The next wettest, 2.85 inches, fell in 2003.
Sandoval’s center stands about 210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 160 ft to 320 ft, a difference of 160 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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 61×. 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 12 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 Sandoval reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rio Grande: about 260 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sandoval; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sandoval has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 103° in August; winter nights fall to about 49° in January. About 20 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Sandoval normally reaches 80° and falls to 58°. The record high is 95°, in 1985; the record low 32°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.59 in, fell in 2003.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1962 at Falcon Dam, 10 miles north-northwest, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
