The Moab 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. 13, 1916, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 8° in 1955.
Moab’s center stands about 4,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,950 ft to 5,540 ft, a difference of 1,590 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is South Mesa, about 7,770 ft, 12 miles east-southeast.
The section below crosses 5 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: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Jurassic, 145 to 164 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 million 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.
A raindrop that lands in Moab reaches the Gulf of California by way of Mill Creek and the Colorado: about 1,050 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 Moab; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Moab has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 99° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 8 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 8 inches of water.
On November 14 Moab normally reaches 57° and falls to 33°. The record high is 72°, in 2007; the record low 21°, in 1994. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 2004.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1980 at Arches National Park Headquarters, 5 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
