The McMinnville 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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9° on Nov. 15, 1955, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 18° in 1959.
McMinnville’s center stands about 160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 100 ft to 350 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sheridan Peak, about 3,180 ft, 13 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 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gabbro. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 McMinnville reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the South Yamhill, the Yamhill, the Willamette and the Columbia: about 170 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 McMinnville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
McMinnville has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in December. About 38 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 McMinnville normally reaches 53° and falls to 38°. The record high is 67°, in 1899; the record low 12°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 3.75 in, fell in 1896.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 from the McMinnville Area threaded record (Mcminnville Municipal Airport, 3 miles east-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
