The Erda 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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Partly cloudy; warmer
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69° on Nov. 12, 2024, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1906. Next is 68° in 1999.
Erda’s center stands about 4,320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,230 ft to 4,870 ft, a difference of 640 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lowe Peak, about 10,510 ft, 15 miles south-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 4 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 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 273 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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.
Rain that falls on Erda runs only a short way, about 3 miles, to Great Salt Lake. 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 Erda; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Erda has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 33 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1906 at Grantsville 2 W, 10 miles west, 230 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
