The Fernley 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
Chance of showers; cooler
Sunny
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
75° on Nov. 16, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 74° in 1995.
Fernley’s center stands about 4,150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,050 ft to 4,560 ft, a difference of 510 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pond Peak, about 8,020 ft, 12 miles west-northwest.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. 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 16 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 34 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Andesite, dacite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 0.9 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.
Rain that falls on Fernley runs only a short way, about 4 miles, to the Great Basin. 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 Fernley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fernley has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in December. About 5 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fernley normally reaches 58° and falls to 32°. The record high is 73°, in 2025; the record low 12°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.60 in, fell in 1981.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Lahontan Dam, 14 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
