The Furnace Creek 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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26° on Nov. 15, 1993, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 30° in 1911.
Furnace Creek’s center stands about 190 ft below sea level. Within three miles the land runs from -270 ft to 750 ft, a difference of 1,020 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tucki Mountain, about 6,690 ft, 15 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, 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.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, dolostone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Middle Devonian, 384 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, mudstone, sandstone. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Mesozoic, 66 to 2,500 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Paleocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 2 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 Furnace Creek reaches the desert basins of Owens Valley and Death Valley by way of Furnace Creek Wash: about 15 river miles. The desert basins of Owens Valley and Death Valley has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Often dry. About 40% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Furnace Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Furnace Creek has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 117° in July; winter nights fall to about 41° in December. About 2 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Furnace Creek normally reaches 78° and falls to 51°. The record high is 89°, in 1967; the record low 30°, in 1911. The most rain on this date, 0.06 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Death Valley National Park, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
