The Socorro 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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11° on Nov. 14, 1976, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1879. Next is 15° in 1880.
Socorro’s center stands about 3,660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,640 ft to 3,950 ft, a difference of 310 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Backbone Hill, about 4,200 ft, 12 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 34×. 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 7 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, sand. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 0.5 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 Socorro reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Riverside Canal and the Rio Grande: about 1,240 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake and Amistad Reservoir.
610 miles of the trip are on the Rio Grande.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Socorro; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Socorro has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in June; winter nights fall to about 34° in December. About 9 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Socorro normally reaches 68° and falls to 42°. The record high is 83°, in 2025; the record low 11°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.85 in, fell in 2004.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1879 from the El Paso Area threaded record (El Paso International Airport, 14 miles north-northwest, 280 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
