The Central 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Chance of showers
73° on Nov. 11, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1905. Next is 72° in 2016.
Central’s center stands about 5,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,780 ft to 6,290 ft, a difference of 1,510 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Signal Peak, about 10,360 ft, 10 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium and colluvium (unconsolidated), 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 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Late Oligocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 28 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Miocene, 5.5 to 12 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartz-monzonite. Age: Early Oligocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 34 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, mudstone. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 59 million years old. About 0.9 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 Central reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Santa Clara, the Virgin and the Colorado: about 610 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, 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 Central; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Central has a dry-summer hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in December. A normal year brings about 25 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 15 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 at Enterprise, 12 miles north-northwest, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
