The Granite 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.
76° on Nov. 15, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1917. Next is 75° in 1941.
Granite’s center stands about 5,140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,590 ft to 9,090 ft, a difference of 4,500 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Twin Peaks, about 11,430 ft, 8 miles east.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. 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 7 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Oligocene, 30 to 42 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Late Mississippian, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Arenite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 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 Granite reaches Great Salt Lake by way of Little Cottonwood Creek and the Jordan: about 35 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 Granite; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Granite has a dry-summer hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 82 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 24 inches of water.
On November 14 Granite normally reaches 50° and falls to 32°. The record high is 70°, in 1990; the record low 13°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 1.39 in, fell in 1955.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1917 at Cottonwood Weir, 3 miles north-northeast, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.