The Smith River 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.
Showers likely
Showers likely
Showers likely
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Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
6.54 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1894. The next wettest, 6.31 inches, fell in 1896.
Smith River’s center stands about 40 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 1,610 ft, a difference of 1,610 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cold Spring Mountain, about 3,720 ft, 13 miles east.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Serpentinite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 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 Smith River reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Rowdy Creek: about 1 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Smith River; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Smith River has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 65° in September; winter nights fall to about 41° in December. About 58 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Smith River normally reaches 58° and falls to 44°. The record high is 72°, in 1939; the record low 25°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 4.16 in, fell in 1966.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 from the Crescent City Area threaded record (Crescent City Mcnamara Airport, 11 miles south-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
