The East Valley 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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Showers likely; 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.
East Valley’s center stands about 4,930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,750 ft to 5,310 ft, a difference of 560 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Freel Peak, about 10,840 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Older gravels (gravel, sand), from the Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sedimentary, volcanic. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granitic, granodiorite, quartz-monzonite. Age: Jurassic to Miocene, 5.3 to 202 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 East Valley reaches the Great Basin by way of Martin Slough and the Carson: about 130 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.
65 miles of the trip are on the Carson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of East Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
East Valley 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 East Valley 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, 5 miles west, 220 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
