The Carlin 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Showers likely
Showers likely; cooler
Showers likely
Showers likely
Chance of showers
−11° on Nov. 15, 1955, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1888. Next is −10° in 1909.
Carlin’s center stands about 4,950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,870 ft to 5,480 ft, a difference of 610 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pine Mountain, about 8,200 ft, 13 miles south.
The section below crosses 8 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.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sedimentary, volcanic. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Andesite, dacite. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 48 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Age: Devonian to Early Mississippian, 347 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, hypabyssal-quartz-latite, dacite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 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. 2 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 Carlin reaches the Great Basin by way of the Humboldt: about 340 river miles. The Great Basin 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 Carlin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Carlin has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in December. A normal year brings about 41 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 10 inches of water.
On November 14 Carlin normally reaches 51° and falls to 22°. The record high is 70°, in 2016; the record low −7°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 1.05 in, fell in 1930.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1888 from the Elko Area threaded record (Elko Regional Airport, 18 miles east-northeast, 100 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
