The Alpine 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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75° on Nov. 15, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 74° in 1999.
Alpine’s center stands about 4,960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,810 ft to 8,140 ft, a difference of 3,330 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Timpanogos, about 11,560 ft, 8 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium and colluvium (unconsolidated), from the Quaternary, 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 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.
Clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Oligocene, 30 to 42 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Late Mississippian, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Arenite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 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 Alpine reaches Great Salt Lake by way of Dry Creek and the Jordan: about 60 river miles. Great Salt Lake has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Lake on the way: Utah Lake.
50 miles of the trip are on the Jordan.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alpine; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alpine has a dry-summer hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 74 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 21 inches of water.
On November 14 Alpine normally reaches 51° and falls to 30°. The record high is 67°, in 2016; the record low 9°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 1.06 in, fell in 1987.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Alpine, here, 140 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
