The Providence 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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69° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 68° in 1990.
Providence’s center stands about 4,710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,460 ft to 7,730 ft, a difference of 3,270 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Logan Peak, about 9,690 ft, 5 miles east.
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 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.
Clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, carbonate. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Permian, 273 to 315 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Carbonate. Age: Early Mississippian to Late Mississippian, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Middle Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 521 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, mixed-clastic. Age: Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene, 48 to 100 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 Providence reaches Great Salt Lake by way of Little Ballard Creek, the Logan and the Bear River: about 90 river miles. Great Salt Lake has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
70 miles of the trip are on the Bear River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Providence; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Providence has a dry-summer hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 62 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Providence normally reaches 46° and falls to 29°. The record high is 67°, in 2025; the record low 11°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 1.09 in, fell in 1955.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Logan Utah St U, 3 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
