The Tonopah 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Mostly sunny; cooler
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
68° on Nov. 14, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is 68° in 2025.
Tonopah’s center stands about 6,070 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,590 ft to 6,670 ft, a difference of 1,080 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lone Mountain, about 9,060 ft, 15 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Intermediate andesite and intermediate flows and breccias (andesite, dacite, quartz-latite), from the Oligocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 34 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 10×. 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.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Oligocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 34 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sedimentary, volcanic. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Andesite, dacite, quartz-latite. Age: Oligocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 34 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Hypabyssal-rhyolite, granite, plutonic. Age: Middle Eocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 48 million years old. About 0.9 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 Tonopah reaches the Great Basin by way of Slime Wash: about 8 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 Tonopah; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tonopah has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in December. About 7 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Tonopah normally reaches 51° and falls to 31°. The record high is 68°, in 2021; the record low 15°, in 1930. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 1946.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Tonopah, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
