The Fallon 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
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
1° on Nov. 13, 1916, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is 1° in 1930.
Fallon’s center stands about 3,970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,940 ft to 4,010 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Red Mountain, about 5,330 ft, 12 miles west-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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 32×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt, clastic. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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.
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 Fallon reaches the Great Basin by way of the A Line Canal: about 2 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 Fallon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fallon has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in December. About 5 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Fallon normally reaches 57° and falls to 25°. The record high is 81°, in 1906; the record low 1°, in 1930. The most rain on this date, 0.31 in, fell in 1946.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Fallon Experiment Station, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
