The Rock Springs 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
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Showers likely
Partly cloudy; cooler
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Showers likely
63° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 62° in 2016.
Rock Springs’s center stands about 6,410 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,230 ft to 6,860 ft, a difference of 630 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Quaking Asp Mountain, about 8,660 ft, 12 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mesaverde Group - Rock Springs Formation (sandstone, shale, claystone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Claystone, siltstone. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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. 3 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 Rock Springs reaches the Gulf of California by way of Bitter Creek, the Green River and the Colorado: about 1,500 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 Rock Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rock Springs has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 54 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 8 inches of water.
On November 14 Rock Springs normally reaches 41° and falls to 22°. The record high is 61°, in 2025; the record low −1°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.34 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Rock Springs Airport, 8 miles east, 350 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
