The Silver 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
Sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
75° on Nov. 16, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 74° in 1995.
Silver Springs’s center stands about 4,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,140 ft to 5,310 ft, a difference of 1,170 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cinder Mountain, about 6,820 ft, 15 miles west.
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 7×. 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.
Andesite, dacite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Pliocene to Holocene, 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.
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 Silver Springs reaches the Great Basin by way of Lahontan Reservoir and the Carson: about 55 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.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Silver Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Silver Springs 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 Silver Springs 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, 9 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
