The Yreka 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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74° on Nov. 14, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 74° in 1996.
Yreka’s center stands about 2,600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,470 ft to 4,160 ft, a difference of 1,690 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cottonwood Peak, about 6,580 ft, 11 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pre-Cenozoic metasedimentary and metavolcanic rocks undivided (schist, gneiss), from the Paleoproterozoic to Cretaceous, 66 to 2,500 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 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mafic-volcanic, greenstone. Age: Paleozoic to Mesozoic, 66 to 542 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Cretaceous, 66 to 2,500 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Melange. Age: Devonian to Jurassic, 145 to 422 million years old. About 0.6 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 Yreka reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Yreka Creek, the Shasta and the Klamath: about 190 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Yreka; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Yreka has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Yreka normally reaches 54° and falls to 31°. The record high is 74°, in 1995; the record low 9°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.22 in, fell in 1981.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Yreka, 2 miles south, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
