The Copperton 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
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Showers likely
Showers likely
−7° on Nov. 16, 1955, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 1° in 1916.
Copperton’s center stands about 5,490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,020 ft to 7,250 ft, a difference of 2,230 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Flat Top Mountain, about 10,580 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Older alluvial deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
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 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.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 273 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Monzonite, granodiorite. Age: Late Eocene, 35 to 35 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Latite, quartz-latite. Age: Late Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 38 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 Copperton reaches Great Salt Lake by way of Bingham Creek and the Jordan: about 40 river miles. Great Salt Lake has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Often dry. About 30% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Copperton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Copperton has a dry-summer hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 75 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Copperton normally reaches 50° and falls to 30°. The record high is 73°, in 2016; the record low 1°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.11 in, fell in 1987.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Tooele, 12 miles west, 550 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
