Qibla direction in Nogales

How to face the Qibla in Nogales

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards north and move a further 31.8° towards east: the result is the bearing of 31.8°. Because the angle sits far from the cardinal points, a rough guess such as “north” would be off by more than 30°, which is why a measured bearing matters in Nogales.

Scholars agree that someone who can see the Kaaba must face it exactly, while someone far away faces its direction (jihat al-Ka‘bah) as precisely as reasonably possible. If a mosque is nearby, its mihrab and prayer lines are the easiest reference, since they were set when the building was laid out. At home, mark the direction once with tape or a small arrow so the whole family prays the same way.

Why a flat map shows a different direction

This is a place where maps mislead badly: a straight line on a flat map from Nogales to Mecca points to 94.2° (east), a full 62.4° away from the true Qibla of 31.8° (north-east). The map line keeps one compass heading and is 1,658 km longer than the great-circle route. Because the Earth is a sphere, the shortest way to Mecca from Nogales first heads north-east, and that is the direction to face.

The angle on this page is the initial bearing of the great circle from 31.3086° N, 110.9422° W to the Kaaba (21.4225° N, 39.8262° E). It is the method used by mosque architects and by every serious Qibla calculator, and it gives one exact answer for each point on Earth.

Distance from Nogales to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 13,375 km from Nogales as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 13,067 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 16 h 14 min, although most pilgrims from Nogales connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in Nogales run 10 hours behind Mecca all year. Prayer times, however, depend on the sun at your own location, so always use the prayer times of Nogales rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Nogales

From Nogales the sun never rises high in the Qibla direction of 31.8°, so you cannot simply face the sun. The opposite method works instead, as the right-hand column of the table shows.

On 365 days the sun stands exactly opposite the Qibla: then the shadow of any vertical object, a pole, a door frame or a plumb line, points straight towards Mecca. This is most frequent in January (31 days), for instance on 1 January 2027 at 14:28.

Twice a year the sun passes directly over the Kaaba, on 28 May 2027 and 16 July 2027. Both happen at night in Nogales (02:18 and 02:27 local time), so they cannot be used here. Instead, on 13 January 2027 at 14:29 and 28 November 2027 at 14:09 the sun is over the point opposite the Kaaba, and every vertical shadow in Nogales points straight to Mecca.

Nogales compared with other cities

Compared with Mexico City, 1,773 km away, the Qibla in Nogales is turned 14.8° further anticlockwise (31.8° against 46.6°), and Mecca is 272 km closer. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Hermosillo (247 km), prays towards 32.5°, a difference of 0.7°.

Across the 99 cities in Mexico on this site, the Qibla ranges from 25.5° in Rosarito to 54.2° in Chetumal, a spread of 28.7°. That is too large to use one national direction, so each city has its own bearing.

See all cities on the Qibla page for Mexico.

Qibla in cities near Nogales

• Hermosillo32.5° · 247 km
• Guaymas32.9° · 377 km
• San Luis Río Colorado27.7° · 383 km
• Ciudad Juárez35.7° · 427 km
• Ciudad Obregón34.0° · 436 km
• Mexicali27.0° · 450 km