The Hat 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.
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
Hat Creek’s center stands about 3,310 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,230 ft to 4,830 ft, a difference of 1,600 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Crater Peak, about 8,620 ft, 11 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Recent (Holocene) volcanic flow rocks, unit 1 (Cascade Volcanic Field) (dacite, andesite), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Dacite, andesite. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 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 Hat Creek reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Hat Creek, the Pit and the Sacramento: about 400 river miles.
310 miles of the trip are on the Sacramento.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hat Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
