The Carson City 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
Chance of showers; cooler
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79° on Nov. 17, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1906. Next is 77° in 1990.
Carson City’s center stands about 4,690 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,600 ft to 6,090 ft, a difference of 1,490 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Rose, about 10,740 ft, 15 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Playa, lake bed, and flood plain deposits (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
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 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Andesite, dacite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metaandesite, metadacite, metarhyolite. Age: Triassic to Jurassic, 145 to 252 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Oligocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Volcanic, carbonate, clastic. Age: Middle Triassic to Middle Jurassic, 164 to 247 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 Carson City reaches the Great Basin by way of the Carson: about 110 river miles. The Great Basin has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Lake on the way: Lahontan Reservoir.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Carson City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Carson City has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 22 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 9 inches of water.
On November 14 Carson City normally reaches 58° and falls to 23°. The record high is 75°, in 1995; the record low 0°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 0.60 in, fell in 2025.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1906 at Minden, 14 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
