The Washoe Valley 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; warmer
Chance of showers; cooler
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Partly cloudy
75° on Nov. 13, 1990, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 75° in 1995.
Washoe Valley’s center stands about 5,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,020 ft to 6,200 ft, a difference of 1,180 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Rose, about 10,740 ft, 8 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Older alluvium and alluvial fan deposits (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 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: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Andesite, dacite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granitic, granodiorite, quartz-monzonite. Age: Jurassic to Miocene, 5.3 to 202 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Oligocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 34 million years old. About 3 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.
Volcanic, carbonate, clastic. Age: Middle Triassic to Middle Jurassic, 164 to 247 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 smaller units 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 Washoe Valley reaches Pyramid Lake by way of Steamboat Creek and the Truckee: about 75 river miles. Pyramid Lake has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
55 miles of the trip are on the Truckee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Washoe Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Washoe Valley has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 21 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 7 inches of water.
On November 14 Washoe Valley normally reaches 57° and falls to 31°. The record high is 74°, in 2016; the record low 4°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 0.57 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Reno Area threaded record (Reno Airport, 15 miles north, 700 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
