The Merlin 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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12° on Nov. 13, 1978, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 15° in 1929.
Merlin’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 860 ft to 1,480 ft, a difference of 620 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Roundtop Mountain, about 4,760 ft, 15 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvial deposits (sand, gravel, silt), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Peridotite, serpentinite. Age: Paleozoic to Jurassic, 145 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mudstone, graywacke. Age: Late Jurassic, 153 to 164 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartz-diorite, diorite. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Late Jurassic, 145 to 164 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Merlin reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Jumpoff Joe Creek and the Rogue: about 85 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Merlin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Merlin has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 35° in January. About 31 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Merlin normally reaches 54° and falls to 39°. The record high is 73°, in 1995; the record low 13°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 1.74 in, fell in 1966.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Grants Pass, 8 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
