The Wadsworth 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
Chance of showers; cooler
Sunny
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
75° on Nov. 16, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 74° in 1995.
Wadsworth’s center stands about 4,090 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,020 ft to 4,530 ft, a difference of 510 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Virginia Peak, about 8,340 ft, 13 miles 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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. 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 14 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 34 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Andesite, dacite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Oligocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 34 million years old. About 0.5 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 Wadsworth reaches Pyramid Lake by way of the Truckee: about 25 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 Wadsworth; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wadsworth 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 Wadsworth 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, 16 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
