The Baker 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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79° on Nov. 15, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1966. Next is 75° in 1967.
Baker’s center stands about 5,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,130 ft to 5,980 ft, a difference of 850 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wheeler Peak, about 13,000 ft, 11 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium, undifferentiated (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. 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 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Quartzite, siltstone, phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 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 Baker reaches the Great Basin by way of Baker Creek: about 25 river miles. The Great Basin has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Often dry. About 80% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Baker; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Baker has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 18 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 6 inches of water.
On November 14 Baker normally reaches 54° and falls to 24°. The record high is 75°, in 1967; the record low 8°, in 1970. The most rain on this date, 0.09 in, fell in 1991.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1966 at Eskdale, 11 miles northeast, 290 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
