The Flaming Gorge 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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−15° on Nov. 13, 2000, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1957. Next is −6° in 1958.
Flaming Gorge’s center stands about 6,900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,030 ft to 8,630 ft, a difference of 2,600 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Trout Creek Peak, about 10,470 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Uinta Mountain Group (including Red Pine Shale) (arenite), from the Mesoproterozoic to Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,600 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Arenite. Age: Mesoproterozoic to Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,600 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Early Eocene to Middle Eocene, 38 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 6 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 Flaming Gorge reaches the Gulf of California by way of Flaming Gorge Reservoir, the Green River and the Colorado: about 1,400 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Flaming Gorge Reservoir and Lake Mohave.
410 miles of the trip are on the Green River.
Seldom reaches the sea. Dams and canals now take nearly all of the Colorado before its old delta in Mexico.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Flaming Gorge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Flaming Gorge has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
On November 14 Flaming Gorge normally reaches 47° and falls to 23°. The record high is 75°, in 1967; the record low −8°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.36 in, fell in 2005.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1957 at Flaming Gorge, 5 miles northeast, 580 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
