The Newton 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.
10° on Nov. 12, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1980. Next is 17° in 2009.
Newton’s center stands about 4,530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,400 ft to 5,280 ft, a difference of 880 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Jardine, about 9,510 ft, 15 miles east.
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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Middle Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 521 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mudstone, unconsolidated. Age: Middle Miocene to Late Pliocene, 2.6 to 16 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.9 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 Newton reaches Great Salt Lake by way of the Bear River: about 65 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 Newton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Newton has a dry-summer hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 17 inches of water.
On November 14 Newton normally reaches 48° and falls to 28°. The record high is 73°, in 1990; the record low 17°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.67 in, fell in 2020.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1980 at Cutler Dam, 4 miles west-southwest, 240 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.