The Helper 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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3° on Nov. 12, 2012, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1980. Next is 4° in 2020.
Helper’s center stands about 5,900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,730 ft to 7,830 ft, a difference of 2,100 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Indian Head, about 9,950 ft, 13 miles north.
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 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.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 84 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Early Eocene to Middle Eocene, 38 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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.
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 Helper reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Price, the Green River and the Colorado: about 1,240 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
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 Helper; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Helper has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 22 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 9 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1980 at Wellington 3 E, 13 miles south-southeast, 520 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
