The Fort McDermitt 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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Showers likely; cooler
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−1° on Nov. 16, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is −1° in 2018.
Fort McDermitt’s center stands about 4,580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,460 ft to 5,240 ft, a difference of 780 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buckskin Mountain, about 8,720 ft, 13 miles south-southeast.
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 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gravel, boulders, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 34 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, hypabyssal-quartz-latite, dacite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.4 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 Fort McDermitt reaches the Black Rock Desert by way of the Quinn: about 180 river miles. The Black Rock Desert has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Often dry. About 80% 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 Fort McDermitt; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fort McDermitt has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in December. A normal year brings about 21 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 8 inches of water.
On November 14 Fort McDermitt normally reaches 52° and falls to 22°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low 3°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 1981.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Mcdermitt, 4 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
