The Clarkston 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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71° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1944. Next is 68° in 2025.
Clarkston’s center stands about 4,880 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,770 ft to 7,070 ft, a difference of 2,300 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gunsight Peak, about 8,200 ft, 4 miles west.
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 7 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.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, carbonate. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Permian, 273 to 315 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mudstone, unconsolidated. Age: Middle Miocene to Late Pliocene, 2.6 to 16 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Middle Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 521 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Clarkston reaches Great Salt Lake by way of Newton Creek and the Bear River: about 75 river miles. Great Salt Lake 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 Clarkston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Clarkston has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 49 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 17 inches of water.
On November 14 Clarkston normally reaches 48° and falls to 23°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low 1°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.60 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1944 at Trenton, 7 miles east, 420 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
