The Elk Creek 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.
Mostly cloudy
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
86° on Nov. 14, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1926. Next is 84° in 1932.
Elk Creek’s center stands about 750 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 670 ft to 1,430 ft, a difference of 760 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Saint John Mountain, about 6,720 ft, 14 miles southwest.
The section below crosses 8 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.
Mica-schist. Age: Early Cretaceous, 110 to 143 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 113 to 145 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 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. 2 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 Elk Creek reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Stony Creek and the Sacramento: about 230 river miles.
Lake on the way: Black Butte Lake.
180 miles of the trip are on the Sacramento.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Elk Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elk Creek has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in December. About 21 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Elk Creek normally reaches 65° and falls to 38°. The record high is 86°, in 1995; the record low 20°, in 1929. The most rain on this date, 1.84 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1926 at Stony Gorge Reservoir, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
