The Mountain View 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.
−18° on Nov. 16, 1978, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1966. Next is −8° in 1997.
Mountain View’s center stands about 6,790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,640 ft to 7,100 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hickey Mountain, about 8,970 ft, 15 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium and Colluvium (clay, silt, sand), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. 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, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sand, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 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 Mountain View reaches the Gulf of California by way of Meeks Creek, the Smiths Fork, the Blacks Fork, the Green River and the Colorado: about 1,590 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 Mountain View; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mountain View 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 Mountain View 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, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.