The Pocatello 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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−13° on Nov. 16, 1955, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1939. Next is −6° in 1978.
Pocatello’s center stands about 4,470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,440 ft to 5,420 ft, a difference of 980 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Scout Mountain, about 8,680 ft, 14 miles south-southeast.
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 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic, volcanic. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 33,000 years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone, sandstone. Age: Ordovician to Devonian, 359 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 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. 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 Pocatello reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Portneuf, the Snake and the Columbia: about 1,070 river miles.
Lakes on the way: American Falls Reservoir, Lake Umatilla, Brownlee Reservoir and Cove Arm Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pocatello; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pocatello has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
On November 14 Pocatello normally reaches 47° and falls to 24°. The record high is 66°, in 2016; the record low −2°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.66 in, fell in 1971.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1939 from the Pocatello Area threaded record (Pocatello Regional Airport, 7 miles west-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
