The Salt Lake 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
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Showers likely
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Showers likely
75° on Nov. 12, 1967, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1874. Next is 74° in 1973.
Salt Lake City’s center stands about 4,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,220 ft to 5,530 ft, a difference of 1,310 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Twin Peaks, about 11,240 ft, 15 miles southeast.
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 6 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 8 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Arenite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Peat. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Carbonate, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian, 497 to 521 million years old. About 0.4 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 Salt Lake City reaches Great Salt Lake by way of the Jordan: about 10 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 Salt Lake City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Salt Lake City has a dry-summer hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Salt Lake City normally reaches 52° and falls to 33°. The record high is 71°, in 1967; the record low 3°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.71 in, fell in 1955.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1874 from the Salt Lake City Area threaded record (Salt Lake City International Airport, 4 miles west). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
