The Valley Wells 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
7° on Nov. 11, 1993, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1920. Next is 21° in 1938.
Valley Wells’s center stands about 2,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,860 ft to 3,750 ft, a difference of 1,890 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Manly Peak, about 7,100 ft, 12 miles east.
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.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Early Pliocene, 4 to 22 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, mudstone, sandstone. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Mesozoic, 66 to 2,500 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, marble. Age: Paleozoic to Mesozoic, 66 to 542 million years old. About 0.7 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.
Valley Wells has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 107° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in December. About 4 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Valley Wells normally reaches 72° and falls to 42°. The record high is 85°, in 1995; the record low 24°, in 1938. The most rain on this date, 0.62 in, fell in 1946.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1920 at Trona, 9 miles south-southwest, 580 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
