The McGill 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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72° on Nov. 12, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 72° in 2016.
McGill’s center stands about 6,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,080 ft to 8,230 ft, a difference of 2,150 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is North Schell Peak, about 11,830 ft, 10 miles east.
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 10 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 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.
Quartzite, siltstone, phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone, limestone. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 384 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 394 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 McGill reaches the Great Basin by way of Duck Creek: about 70 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: Goshute Lake.
55 miles of the trip are on Duck Creek.
Often dry. About 30% 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 McGill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
McGill has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in December. A normal year brings about 37 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 9 inches of water.
On November 14 McGill normally reaches 52° and falls to 23°. The record high is 69°, in 2013; the record low −1°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 0.45 in, fell in 1955.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Mcgill, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
