The Ashland 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.
Mostly cloudy
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
77° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 74° in 1900.
Ashland’s center stands about 1,940 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,690 ft to 4,500 ft, a difference of 2,810 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Ashland, about 7,480 ft, 8 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granitic rocks (quartz-diorite, diorite), from the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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.
Quartz-diorite, diorite. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 34 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 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 Ashland reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Bear Creek and the Rogue: about 150 river miles.
130 miles of the trip are on the Rogue.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ashland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ashland has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in December. About 20 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ashland normally reaches 54° and falls to 33°. The record high is 70°, in 2025; the record low 14°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 2.60 in, fell in 1903.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Ashland, here, 210 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
