The Cold Springs 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
Showers likely; cooler
Sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
73° on Nov. 14, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 71° in 1999.
Cold Springs’s center stands about 5,060 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,030 ft to 6,500 ft, a difference of 1,470 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Babbitt Peak, about 8,720 ft, 9 miles southwest.
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 9 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.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granitic, granodiorite, quartz-monzonite. Age: Jurassic to Miocene, 5.3 to 202 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metaandesite, metadacite, metarhyolite. Age: Triassic to Jurassic, 145 to 252 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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. 3 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 Cold Springs reaches Honey Lake by way of Long Valley Creek: about 50 river miles. Honey Lake 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 Cold Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cold Springs has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in December. A normal year brings about 30 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 8 inches of water.
On November 14 Cold Springs normally reaches 55° and falls to 33°. The record high is 73°, in 2016; the record low 23°, in 2022. The most rain on this date, 0.08 in, fell in 2025.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Reno Wfo, 12 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
