The Preston 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.
Preston’s center stands about 4,720 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,450 ft to 4,900 ft, a difference of 450 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Doubletop Mountain, about 9,830 ft, 14 miles southeast.
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 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.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 33,000 years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic, volcanic. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 0.9 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 Preston reaches Great Salt Lake by way of Worm Creek, the Cub and the Bear River: about 100 river miles. Great Salt Lake has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
85 miles of the trip are on the Bear River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Preston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Preston 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 Preston 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, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
