The Parshall 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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66° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1982. Next is 65° in 2016.
Parshall’s center stands about 7,580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,460 ft to 8,810 ft, a difference of 1,350 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Williams Peak, about 11,600 ft, 12 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Coalmont Fm (arkose, conglomerate, shale), from the Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Arkose, conglomerate, shale. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, schist, migmatite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Miocene, 7 to 33 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 smaller units 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 Parshall reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Colorado: about 1,360 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
400 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Seldom reaches the sea. Dams and canals now take nearly all of the Colorado before its old delta in Mexico.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Parshall; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Parshall has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 0° in January. A normal year brings about 81 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 14 inches of water.
On November 14 Parshall normally reaches 42° and falls to 16°. The record high is 60°, in 2025; the record low −6°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.25 in, fell in 2005.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1982 at Williams Fork Dam, 2 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
