The Ely 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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73° on Nov. 11, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1888. Next is 71° in 1990.
Ely’s center stands about 6,450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,290 ft to 7,780 ft, a difference of 1,490 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cleve Creek Baldy, about 10,920 ft, 13 miles east.
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 9 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 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 273 to 324 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.
Siltstone, sandstone, limestone. Age: Permian, 273 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, limestone, shale. Age: Late Devonian to Early Mississippian, 347 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sedimentary. Age: Late Cretaceous to Early Oligocene, 28 to 100 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. 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 Ely reaches the Great Basin by way of Murry Creek, Steptoe Creek, Tailings Creek and Duck Creek: about 80 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: Goshute Lake.
55 miles of the trip are on Duck Creek.
Often dry. About 30% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ely; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ely has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 54 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 9 inches of water.
On November 14 Ely normally reaches 52° and falls to 20°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low −15°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 0.54 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1888 from the Ely Area threaded record (Ely Airport, 4 miles northeast, 200 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
