The Kep'el 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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Partly cloudy
19° on Nov. 13, 1929, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is 21° in 1936.
Kep'el’s center stands about 790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 110 ft to 3,350 ft, a difference of 3,240 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blue Creek Mountain, about 4,920 ft, 8 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Franciscan schist (mica-schist), from the Early Cretaceous, 110 to 143 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.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Early Cretaceous, 110 to 143 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Serpentinite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Triassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 252 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.
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 Kep'el reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Cappell Creek and the Klamath: about 35 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Kep'el; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kep'el has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 37° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Kep'el normally reaches 56° and falls to 42°. The record high is 79°, in 1939; the record low 20°, in 1929. The most rain on this date, 2.00 in, fell in 1963.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Orleans, 15 miles east, 390 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
