The Elko 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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−11° on Nov. 15, 1955, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1888. Next is −10° in 1909.
Elko’s center stands about 5,120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,040 ft to 5,620 ft, a difference of 580 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Elko Mountain, about 7,470 ft, 8 miles east-northeast.
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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Conglomerate, sedimentary. Age: Late Cretaceous to Early Oligocene, 28 to 100 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sedimentary, volcanic. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 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.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 34 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 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.
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 Elko reaches the Great Basin by way of the Humboldt: about 380 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 Elko; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elko 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 Elko 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, here). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
