The Murray 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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75° on Nov. 12, 1967, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1874. Next is 74° in 1973.
Murray’s center stands about 4,300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,240 ft to 4,460 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Twin Peaks, about 11,430 ft, 15 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lake Bonneville deposits (clay), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
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 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.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Oligocene, 30 to 42 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metamorphic. Age: Neoarchean to Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.8 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Arenite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.4 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 Murray reaches Great Salt Lake by way of Little Cottonwood Creek and the Jordan: about 25 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 Murray; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Murray has a dry-summer hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Murray normally reaches 52° and falls to 33°. The record high is 71°, in 1967; the record low 3°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.71 in, fell in 1955.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1874 from the Salt Lake City Area threaded record (Salt Lake City International Airport, 8 miles north-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
