The Hawthorne 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; warmer
Showers likely; cooler
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
78° on Nov. 17, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1954. Next is 77° in 2020.
Hawthorne’s center stands about 4,330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,110 ft to 4,930 ft, a difference of 820 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Grant, about 11,200 ft, 9 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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. 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.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Volcanic, carbonate, clastic. Age: Middle Triassic to Middle Jurassic, 164 to 247 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Carbonate, arenite, clastic. Age: Middle Triassic to Middle Jurassic, 164 to 247 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Volcanic. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
Andesite, dacite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 0.3 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 Hawthorne runs straight into Walker Lake. Walker Lake 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 Hawthorne; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hawthorne has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. About 4 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Hawthorne normally reaches 57° and falls to 33°. The record high is 74°, in 1963; the record low 13°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.02 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1954 at Hawthorne, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
