The Thatcher 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.
Thatcher’s center stands about 4,330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,250 ft to 5,930 ft, a difference of 1,680 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wellsville Cone, about 9,320 ft, 15 miles east-southeast.
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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. 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.
Sandstone, carbonate. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Permian, 273 to 315 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 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 Thatcher reaches Great Salt Lake by way of the Malad and the Bear River: about 60 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 Thatcher; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Thatcher 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 Thatcher 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, 16 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
