The Springdale 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.
90° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1904. Next is 81° in 1990.
Springdale’s center stands about 3,900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,770 ft to 7,000 ft, a difference of 3,230 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Home Valley Knoll, about 8,170 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
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 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mudstone. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Arenite, sandstone-mudstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Middle Jurassic, 164 to 202 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Middle Jurassic, 164 to 175 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Triassic, 247 to 252 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 100 million 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Springdale reaches the Gulf of California by way of the North Fork Virgin, the Virgin and the Colorado: about 620 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 Springdale; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Springdale has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 100° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in December. About 16 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Springdale normally reaches 65° and falls to 38°. The record high is 90°, in 1999; the record low 14°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.92 in, fell in 1955.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1904 at Zion National Park, here, 140 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.