The Fish Springs 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Chance of showers; cooler
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
79° on Nov. 17, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1906. Next is 77° in 1990.
Fish Springs’s center stands about 5,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,880 ft to 5,600 ft, a difference of 720 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Freel Peak, about 10,840 ft, 15 miles west-southwest.
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 8 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 9 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sedimentary, volcanic. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Volcanic, carbonate, clastic. Age: Middle Triassic to Middle Jurassic, 164 to 247 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 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.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 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 Fish Springs reaches the Great Basin by way of Buckeye Creek and the Carson: about 140 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 Fish Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fish Springs 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 Fish Springs 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, 7 miles west, 450 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
