The Loa 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.
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Showers likely
72° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 69° in 2021.
Loa’s center stands about 7,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,990 ft to 7,690 ft, a difference of 700 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Thousand Lake Mountain, about 11,280 ft, 9 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Older alluvial deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 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. 2 smaller units 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 Loa reaches the Gulf of California by way of Spring Creek, the Fremont, the Dirty Devil and the Colorado: about 1,100 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 Loa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Loa has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 19 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 8 inches of water.
On November 14 Loa normally reaches 51° and falls to 18°. The record high is 68°, in 1967; the record low 0°, in 1938. The most rain on this date, 0.37 in, fell in 1987.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Loa, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
