The Plain City 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.
70° on Nov. 15, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 70° in 2024.
Plain City’s center stands about 4,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,210 ft to 4,250 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ben Lomond, about 9,660 ft, 8 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium and colluvium (unconsolidated), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metamorphic. Age: Neoarchean to Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.8 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic. Age: Mesoproterozoic to Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,600 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Peat. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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. 2 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.
Rain that falls on Plain City runs straight into Great Salt Lake. 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 Plain City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Plain City has a dry-summer hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 16 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Plain City normally reaches 49° and falls to 31°. The record high is 69°, in 2025; the record low 19°, in 2009. The most rain on this date, 0.77 in, fell in 1950.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Ogden Hinkley Airport, 8 miles south-southeast, 210 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.