The Clifton 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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5° on Nov. 12, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1964. Next is 11° in 1994.
Clifton’s center stands about 4,840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,710 ft to 7,030 ft, a difference of 2,320 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Oxford Peak, about 9,230 ft, 7 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lake Bonneville deposits (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 33,000 years old.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 33,000 years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic, volcanic. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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 Clifton reaches Great Salt Lake by way of the Bear River: about 120 river miles. Great Salt Lake has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Clifton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Clifton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 17 inches of water.
On November 14 Clifton normally reaches 47° and falls to 25°. The record high is 68°, in 1990; the record low 12°, in 1994. The most rain on this date, 0.43 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1964 at Preston, 9 miles southeast, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
