The Pinedale 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.
61° on Nov. 12, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 59° in 1953.
Pinedale’s center stands about 7,180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,110 ft to 7,540 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Photographers Point, about 10,380 ft, 14 miles northeast.
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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, gravel, boulders. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Oil-shale, marlstone, mudstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Archean. About 1 mi of the line.
Mudstone, conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old. About 0.5 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 Pinedale reaches the Gulf of California by way of Pine Creek, the New Fork, the Green River and the Colorado: about 1,650 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Flaming Gorge Reservoir and Lake Mohave.
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 Pinedale; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pinedale has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. A normal year brings about 76 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
On November 14 Pinedale normally reaches 40° and falls to 13°. The record high is 61°, in 2016; the record low −15°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.35 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Pinedale, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.