The Oakley 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
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
Chance of showers
65° on Nov. 15, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1990. Next is 64° in 1999.
Oakley’s center stands about 6,930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,770 ft to 7,600 ft, a difference of 830 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Quealy Peak, about 8,010 ft, 6 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Frontier Formation (shale, sandstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 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.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Marlstone, limestone, oil-shale. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 3 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 Oakley reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Hams Fork, the Blacks Fork, the Green River and the Colorado: about 1,600 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 Oakley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Oakley has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. A normal year brings about 50 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 9 inches of water.
On November 14 Oakley normally reaches 43° and falls to 14°. The record high is 64°, in 1999; the record low 0°, in 2009. The most rain on this date, 0.22 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1990 at Kemmerer 2 N, 5 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
