The Big Water 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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76° on Nov. 17, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1962. Next is 74° in 1968.
Big Water’s center stands about 4,110 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,800 ft to 5,040 ft, a difference of 1,240 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Coyote Point, about 6,300 ft, 14 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Eolian deposits (sand), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. 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-mudstone, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 94 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, 180 to 210 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Arenite, sandstone-mudstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Middle Jurassic, 164 to 202 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Late Triassic, 210 to 230 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 125 million 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. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Big Water reaches the Gulf of California by way of Wahweap Creek and the Colorado: about 830 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Seldom reaches the sea. Dams and canals now take nearly all of the Colorado before its old delta in Mexico.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Big Water; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Big Water has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 8 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Big Water normally reaches 58° and falls to 32°. The record high is 71°, in 1969; the record low 17°, in 1994. The most rain on this date, 0.09 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1962 at Big Water, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
