The Walker Lake 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
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Chance of showers
Showers likely
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78° on Nov. 17, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1954. Next is 77° in 2020.
Walker Lake’s center stands about 4,110 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,920 ft to 8,200 ft, a difference of 4,280 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Grant, about 11,200 ft, 6 miles south-southwest.
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 3 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.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Volcanic, carbonate, clastic. Age: Middle Triassic to Middle Jurassic, 164 to 247 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 3 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 Walker Lake runs straight into Walker Lake. Walker 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 Walker Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Walker Lake has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. About 4 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Walker Lake normally reaches 57° and falls to 33°. The record high is 74°, in 1963; the record low 13°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.02 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1954 at Hawthorne, 12 miles southeast, 290 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
