The Spanish 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. 13, 1990, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 75° in 1995.
Spanish Springs’s center stands about 4,520 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,460 ft to 5,450 ft, a difference of 990 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Peavine Mountain, about 8,220 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Older alluvium and alluvial fan deposits (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 34 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granitic, granodiorite, quartz-monzonite. Age: Jurassic to Miocene, 5.3 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Andesite, dacite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Spanish Springs reaches Pyramid Lake by way of the Truckee: about 60 river miles. Pyramid 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 Spanish Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Spanish Springs has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 21 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 7 inches of water.
On November 14 Spanish Springs normally reaches 57° and falls to 31°. The record high is 74°, in 2016; the record low 4°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 0.57 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Reno Area threaded record (Reno Airport, 10 miles south-southwest, 120 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
