The Phippsburg 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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70° on Nov. 11, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 68° in 1933.
Phippsburg’s center stands about 7,510 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,340 ft to 8,770 ft, a difference of 1,430 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Orno Peak, about 12,050 ft, 13 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Browns Park Fm (sandstone, siltstone), from the Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 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 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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. 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 Phippsburg reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Yampa, the Green River and the Colorado: about 1,570 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
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 Phippsburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Phippsburg has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 4° in January. A normal year brings about 184 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 25 inches of water.
On November 14 Phippsburg normally reaches 44° and falls to 17°. The record high is 65°, in 1934; the record low −22°, in 1919. The most rain on this date, 1.14 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Steamboat Springs, 19 miles north-northeast, 640 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
