The Littlerock 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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83° on Nov. 15, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1985. Next is 82° in 2014.
Littlerock’s center stands about 2,870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,680 ft to 3,850 ft, a difference of 1,170 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Lewis, about 8,370 ft, 15 miles southeast.
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 5 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 to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Miocene, 5.3 to 2,500 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartz-monzonite. Age: Late Triassic, 218 to 218 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.
A raindrop that lands in Littlerock reaches the desert basins of Owens Valley and Death Valley by way of Little Rock Wash: about 13 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 50% 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 Littlerock; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Littlerock has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 99° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in December. About 7 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Littlerock normally reaches 68° and falls to 44°. The record high is 80°, in 2021; the record low 29°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.14 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1985 at Pearblossom, 5 miles east-southeast, 230 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
