The Mount Shasta 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.
Chance of showers
Showers likely
Chance of showers
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Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
7.38 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1948. The next wettest, 4.10 inches, fell in 1950.
Mount Shasta’s center stands about 3,590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,050 ft to 5,330 ft, a difference of 2,280 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Shasta, about 14,110 ft, 9 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 2×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Early Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 455 to 480 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Peridotite. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Mount Shasta reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the Sacramento: about 370 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mount Shasta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mount Shasta has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in December. About 38 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Mount Shasta normally reaches 51° and falls to 32°. The record high is 73°, in 1995; the record low 11°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 1.91 in, fell in 1965.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 from the Mount Shasta Area threaded record (Mount Shasta, here). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
