The Caribou 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.
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−3° on Nov. 12, 1985, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 5° in 1939.
Caribou’s center stands about 3,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,860 ft to 6,200 ft, a difference of 3,340 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Dyer Mountain, about 7,450 ft, 13 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Triassic marine rocks, unit 3 (Lake Almanor) (slate), from the Permian to Jurassic, 145 to 299 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 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Peridotite, serpentinite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic, greenstone. Age: Paleozoic to Mesozoic, 66 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Argillite, quartzite, phyllite. Age: Ordovician to Triassic, 202 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Slate. Age: Permian to Jurassic, 145 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 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 Caribou reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the North Fork Feather, the Feather and the Sacramento: about 210 river miles.
75 miles of the trip are on the Sacramento.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Caribou; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Caribou has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 28 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Caribou normally reaches 53° and falls to 29°. The record high is 80°, in 1921; the record low 5°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 3.35 in, fell in 2025.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Quincy, 15 miles southeast, 150 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
