The Austin 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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72° on Nov. 11, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1887. Next is 72° in 1995.
Austin’s center stands about 6,600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,840 ft to 8,040 ft, a difference of 2,200 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is North Toiyabe Peak, about 10,750 ft, 10 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Older felsic phaneritic intrusive rocks (granitic, granodiorite, quartz-monzonite), from the Jurassic, 145 to 202 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 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granitic, granodiorite, quartz-monzonite. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Age: Cambrian to Devonian, 359 to 497 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Oligocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 34 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Age: Devonian to Early Mississippian, 347 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, chert, phyllite. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 2 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 Austin reaches the Great Basin by way of the Reese and the Humboldt: about 360 river miles. The Great Basin has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
240 miles of the trip are on the Humboldt.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Austin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Austin has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in December. A normal year brings about 64 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
On November 14 Austin normally reaches 50° and falls to 31°. The record high is 70°, in 2016; the record low 5°, in 1930. The most rain on this date, 0.54 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 at Austin #2, here, 180 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
