The Bryce Canyon City 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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65° on Nov. 11, 1956, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 64° in 2008.
Bryce Canyon City’s center stands about 7,650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,940 ft to 7,980 ft, a difference of 1,040 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Powell Point, about 10,220 ft, 14 miles east.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, mudstone. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 59 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Middle Jurassic, 164 to 175 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Late Oligocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 28 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 94 million years old. About 0.4 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 Bryce Canyon City reaches Sevier Lake by way of the East Fork Sevier and the Sevier: about 360 river miles. Sevier Lake has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
300 miles of the trip are on the Sevier.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bryce Canyon City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bryce Canyon City has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. About 12 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bryce Canyon City normally reaches 46° and falls to 16°. The record high is 64°, in 2021; the record low −6°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 0.37 in, fell in 1955.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Bryce Canyon Airport, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
