The Spring Creek 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Showers likely
Showers likely; cooler
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Showers likely
Chance of showers
−7° on Nov. 16, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1993. Next is −2° in 2022.
Spring Creek’s center stands about 5,650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,380 ft to 5,830 ft, a difference of 450 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ruby Dome, about 11,340 ft, 9 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Younger tuffaceous sedimentary rocks (sedimentary, volcanic), from the Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 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 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.
Sedimentary, volcanic. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 10 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.
Marble. Age: Cambrian to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 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 Spring Creek reaches the Great Basin by way of Spring Creek, Tenmile Creek, the South Fork Humboldt and the Humboldt: about 400 river miles. The Great Basin 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 Spring Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Spring Creek has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 19 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 10 inches of water.
On November 14 Spring Creek normally reaches 51° and falls to 19°. The record high is 69°, in 2016; the record low 3°, in 2022. The most rain on this date, 0.15 in, fell in 2001.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1993 at South Fork State Recreation Area, 9 miles west-southwest, 380 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
