The Metolius 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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77° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1909. Next is 75° in 1990.
Metolius’s center stands about 2,540 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,300 ft to 2,820 ft, a difference of 520 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gray Butte, about 5,050 ft, 12 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tuffaceous sedimentary rocks and tuff (sandstone, siltstone, mudstone), from the Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 38 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Paleocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 0.5 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 Metolius reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Willow Creek, the Deschutes and the Columbia: about 310 river miles.
200 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Metolius; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Metolius has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in December. About 9 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Metolius normally reaches 49° and falls to 26°. The record high is 69°, in 1969; the record low −6°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.61 in, fell in 1966.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1909 at Madras, 4 miles northeast, 260 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
