The Vista West 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
−27° on Nov. 12, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1939. Next is −19° in 2000.
Vista West’s center stands about 5,280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,140 ft to 5,430 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Casper Mountain, about 8,210 ft, 11 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cody Shale (shale, siltstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 78 to 83 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.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 78 to 83 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Permian, 252 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Archean. About 0.6 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 Vista West reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,500 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Vista West; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Vista West has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 72 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
On November 14 Vista West normally reaches 47° and falls to 23°. The record high is 68°, in 1999; the record low −10°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1939 from the Casper Area threaded record (Casper-Natrona County Airport, 3 miles northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
