The Falls City 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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10° on Nov. 15, 1955, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 19° in 1929.
Falls City’s center stands about 400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 270 ft to 1,760 ft, a difference of 1,490 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Laurel Mountain, about 3,600 ft, 8 miles west-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 7×. 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. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Gabbro. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Paleocene to Middle Eocene, 38 to 66 million years old. About 1 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 Falls City reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Little Luckiamute, the Luckiamute, the Willamette and the Columbia: about 240 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 Falls City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Falls City has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in August; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. A normal year brings about 10 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 81 inches of water.
On November 14 Falls City normally reaches 51° and falls to 37°. The record high is 67°, in 1927; the record low 18°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 4.03 in, fell in 1896.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Falls City 2 SSW, 2 miles south-southwest, 290 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
