The Orderville 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. 14, 1985, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 11° in 1904.
Orderville’s center stands about 5,470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,310 ft to 6,880 ft, a difference of 1,570 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Strawberry Point, about 8,990 ft, 12 miles north-northwest.
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 6×. 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, sandstone-mudstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Middle Jurassic, 164 to 202 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 94 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Middle Jurassic, 164 to 175 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Sand. 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 Orderville reaches the Gulf of California by way of the East Fork Virgin, the Virgin and the Colorado: about 650 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, 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 Orderville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Orderville has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 22 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 15 inches of water.
On November 14 Orderville normally reaches 60° and falls to 32°. The record high is 76°, in 2016; the record low 6°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 0.82 in, fell in 1955.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Kanab, 18 miles south-southeast, 570 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
