The West Valley 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.
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75° on Nov. 12, 1967, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1874. Next is 74° in 1973.
West Valley City’s center stands about 4,310 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,240 ft to 4,780 ft, a difference of 540 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Storm Mountain, about 9,420 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 4 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.
Clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 273 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 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.
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 West Valley City runs only a short way, about 8 miles, to 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 West Valley City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Valley 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 West Valley 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, 6 miles north-northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
