The Cedar Hills 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.
77° on Nov. 12, 1990, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1946. Next is 76° in 2024.
Cedar Hills’s center stands about 4,960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,580 ft to 8,660 ft, a difference of 4,080 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Timpanogos, about 11,560 ft, 6 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lake Bonneville deposits (clay), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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 12 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Oligocene, 30 to 42 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Late Mississippian, 324 to 359 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.
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 Cedar Hills reaches Great Salt Lake by way of the American Fork and the Jordan: about 70 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 Cedar Hills; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cedar Hills has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 41 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Cedar Hills normally reaches 54° and falls to 33°. The record high is 74°, in 1967; the record low 13°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.77 in, fell in 1987.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1946 at Pleasant Grove, 3 miles south-southeast, 270 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.