The Woods Cross 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.
75° on Nov. 12, 1967, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1874. Next is 74° in 1973.
Woods Cross’s center stands about 4,380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,210 ft to 6,010 ft, a difference of 1,800 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Thurston Peak, about 9,650 ft, 15 miles north.
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 10 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 5 mi of the line.
Mudstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metamorphic. Age: Neoarchean to Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.8 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Peat. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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. 4 smaller units 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 Woods Cross reaches Great Salt Lake by way of the Jordan: about 1 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 Woods Cross; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Woods Cross 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 Woods Cross 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, 8 miles south-southwest, 150 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.