The Tooele 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Showers likely
−7° on Nov. 16, 1955, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 1° in 1916.
Tooele’s center stands about 5,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,630 ft to 6,730 ft, a difference of 2,100 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Flat Top Mountain, about 10,580 ft, 12 miles south-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 7 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 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 273 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Mississippian to Early Pennsylvanian, 315 to 331 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Late Mississippian, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Peat. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.5 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.
Rain that falls on Tooele runs straight into Great Salt Lake. 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 Tooele; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tooele has a dry-summer hot-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 75 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Tooele normally reaches 50° and falls to 30°. The record high is 73°, in 2016; the record low 1°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.11 in, fell in 1987.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Tooele, here, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
