Tadpole Warm Spring
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Tadpole Warm Spring is barely warm, under seventy degrees, and sits a dozen feet from a road two miles outside Chubbuck in Bannock County. It is not a soaking spring. Ownership and access went unrecorded, and with the spring this close to town and to a road the ownership question is worth settling before stopping.
Dry, low country at about 4,500 feet. Thirty inches of snow in an ordinary winter and fourteen of precipitation; the yearly mean is near fifty. It comes up at the road's edge, so there is no walk. The record carries no road name and no land unit. There is no USGS site.
Winter shows as the best season in the record, which for a spring this cool mostly means the water feels warmer than the air. Mink Creek Group Site Campground is sixteen miles away. No water chemistry, and no date on the temperature. Check ownership; nothing on file says this is open.
Aircraft with laser scanners measured this ground to within inches. The scan strips out trees and buildings, leaving the bare shape of the land around Tadpole Warm Spring.
- Setting
- Open ground
- Flat, open ground all around.
- Highest ground nearby
- 12 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the east
A slice through the ground from northwest to southeast, about 0.6 miles end to end.
Elevation data: USGS 3D Elevation Program. Aerial imagery: USGS The National Map. Public domain.
That's about 1½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 32% of the springs on this site.
Heat flow measures the warmth working its way up through the ground from deep inside the earth. Where it runs high, rain and snowmelt that seep down through cracks in the rock come back up hot.
See every spring on the geothermal heat map →
Heat flow estimate: Stanford Thermal Earth Model (Aljubran & Horne, 2024), CC BY 4.0.
Overview Mink Creek Group Site Campground is located just 12 miles south of Pocatello, Idaho, along the Bannock Highway. The Mink Creek area is a popular area for birding and wildlife viewing, with many miles of multi-use trails waiting to be explored.Recreation The West Fork Mink Creek Trail begins just outside the campground and is popular with hikers, mountain bikers and horseback riders. Additional trails including Corral Creek Trail and Valve House Trail are in the vicinity.Facilities Th...