The Portage 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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10° on Nov. 12, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1980. Next is 17° in 2009.
Portage’s center stands about 4,360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,360 ft to 6,960 ft, a difference of 2,600 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Old Baldy Peak, about 8,330 ft, 14 miles north-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 11 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.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Middle Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 521 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Mudstone, unconsolidated. Age: Middle Miocene to Late Pliocene, 2.6 to 16 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. 5 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.
A raindrop that lands in Portage reaches Great Salt Lake by way of the Malad and the Bear River: about 70 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 Portage; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Portage 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 Portage 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, 12 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
