The Aumsville 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.
70° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 68° in 1930.
Aumsville’s center stands about 360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 310 ft to 610 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Silverton Hills, about 1,860 ft, 12 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lacustrine and fluvial sedimentary rocks (clay, silt, sand), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 11×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Miocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 16 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Middle Miocene, 12 to 16 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 Aumsville reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Beaver Creek, Mill Creek, the Willamette and the Columbia: about 200 river miles.
Lake on the way: Willamette Falls Hydroelectric Power Reservoir.
100 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Aumsville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Aumsville has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 35° in December. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Aumsville normally reaches 54° and falls to 39°. The record high is 68°, in 2001; the record low 12°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 3.00 in, fell in 1896.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 from the Salem Area threaded record (Salem Airport (Mcnary Field), 8 miles west-northwest, 150 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.