The Mormon Lake 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Chance of showers
69° on Nov. 16, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1969. Next is 69° in 2016.
Mormon Lake’s center stands about 7,150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,100 ft to 7,750 ft, a difference of 650 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hutch Mountain, about 8,510 ft, 8 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pliocene to late Miocene basaltic rocks, from the Late Miocene to Early Pliocene, 4 to 8 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt. Age: Late Miocene to Early Pliocene, 4 to 8 million years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Permian, 270 to 280 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 230 to 245 million years old. About 0.6 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.
Mormon Lake has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 24 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Mormon Lake normally reaches 50° and falls to 26°. The record high is 69°, in 2016; the record low −1°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1987.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1969 at Happy Jack Ranger Station, 12 miles south-southeast, 330 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
