The Crescent 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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3.15 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1974. The next wettest, 2.49 inches, fell in 2007.
Crescent’s center stands about 4,460 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,370 ft to 5,100 ft, a difference of 730 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hamner Butte, about 7,090 ft, 9 miles northwest.
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 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basaltic-andesite, basalt, andesite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Basaltic-andesite, basalt. Age: Early Pliocene to Pleistocene, 1.2 to 3.9 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, dacite. Age: Early Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 0.4 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 Crescent reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Little Deschutes, the Deschutes and the Columbia: about 450 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Billy Chinook.
200 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Crescent; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Crescent has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 74° in August; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 190 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Crescent normally reaches 41° and falls to 26°. The record high is 58°, in 1999; the record low 8°, in 2022. The most rain on this date, 1.65 in, fell in 2014.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1974 at Odell Lake-East, 15 miles west-northwest, 340 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
