The Winnemucca 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.
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−8° on Nov. 12, 1985, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1877. Next is −5° in 1955.
Winnemucca’s center stands about 4,300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,260 ft to 6,130 ft, a difference of 1,870 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sonoma Peak, about 9,310 ft, 10 miles southeast.
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 9 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.
Age: Cambrian to Devonian, 359 to 497 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Clastic. Age: Late Triassic to Middle Jurassic, 164 to 227 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.8 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 Winnemucca reaches the Great Basin by way of the Humboldt: about 150 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 Winnemucca; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Winnemucca has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in December. A normal year brings about 22 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 8 inches of water.
On November 14 Winnemucca normally reaches 55° and falls to 24°. The record high is 71°, in 2016; the record low −3°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 0.38 in, fell in 1965.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1877 from the Winnemucca Area threaded record (Winnemucca Airport, 6 miles southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
