The Carter 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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−18° on Nov. 16, 1978, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1966. Next is −8° in 1997.
Carter’s center stands about 6,540 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,470 ft to 6,820 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Haystack Butte, about 7,610 ft, 15 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Green River Formation - Laney Member (oil-shale, marlstone), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 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 19×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Oil-shale, marlstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, 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.
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 Carter reaches the Gulf of California by way of Muddy Creek, the Blacks Fork, the Green River and the Colorado: about 1,570 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Flaming Gorge Reservoir and Lake Mohave.
410 miles of the trip are on the Green River.
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 Carter; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Carter has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 64 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 11 inches of water.
On November 14 Carter normally reaches 42° and falls to 18°. The record high is 66°, in 1999; the record low −8°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.25 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1966 at Mountain View, 13 miles south-southeast, 260 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
