The La Sal 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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6° on Nov. 17, 2000, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1978. Next is 6° in 2014.
La Sal’s center stands about 6,970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,590 ft to 8,100 ft, a difference of 1,510 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Peale, about 12,680 ft, 9 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Eolian deposits (sand), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 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 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.
Sand. 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.
Arenite. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Diorite, monzodiorite. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian to Permian, 273 to 307 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 125 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 La Sal reaches the Gulf of California by way of West Coyote Creek, Kane Springs Creek and the Colorado: about 1,080 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
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 La Sal; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
La Sal has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 50 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 13 inches of water.
On November 14 La Sal normally reaches 49° and falls to 26°. The record high is 67°, in 1999; the record low 8°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1978 at La Sal 1 SW, here, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
