The Sutcliffe 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
Chance of showers
Showers likely; cooler
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
24° on Nov. 16, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1967. Next is 25° in 1968.
Sutcliffe’s center stands about 3,890 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,800 ft to 5,370 ft, a difference of 1,570 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tule Peak, about 8,710 ft, 8 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 4 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.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 34 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 3 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Oligocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 34 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 0.4 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 Sutcliffe runs straight into Pyramid Lake. 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 Sutcliffe; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sutcliffe has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 7 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Sutcliffe normally reaches 52° and falls to 38°. The record high is 69°, in 1996; the record low 25°, in 1994. The most rain on this date, 1.32 in, fell in 1981.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1967 at Sutcliffe, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
