The Emigration Canyon 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.
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Showers likely
Showers likely
−16° on Nov. 16, 1955, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1920. Next is 1° in 1964.
Emigration Canyon’s center stands about 5,430 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,140 ft to 7,360 ft, a difference of 2,220 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Twin Peaks, about 11,240 ft, 12 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Morrison Formation (mudstone), from the Late Jurassic, 145 to 164 million years old.
The section below crosses 13 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.
Clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone, limestone. Age: Early Triassic, 247 to 252 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mudstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Arenite. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 7 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 Emigration Canyon reaches Great Salt Lake by way of Emigration Creek and the Jordan: about 25 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 Emigration Canyon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Emigration Canyon has a dry-summer hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. About 25 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Emigration Canyon normally reaches 51° and falls to 30°. The record high is 70°, in 1953; the record low 7°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.91 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1920 at Mountain Dell Dam, 2 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
