The Myrtle Creek 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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76° on Nov. 13, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 74° in 1999.
Myrtle Creek’s center stands about 660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 590 ft to 2,290 ft, a difference of 1,700 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Silver Butte, about 3,960 ft, 12 miles south-southwest.
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 9 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.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Late Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 164 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Late Jurassic, 145 to 164 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Paleocene to Middle Eocene, 38 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mudstone, graywacke. Age: Late Jurassic, 153 to 164 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 125 to 153 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartz-diorite, diorite. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 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 Myrtle Creek reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of North Myrtle Creek, the South Umpqua and the Umpqua: about 150 river miles.
110 miles of the trip are on the Umpqua.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Myrtle Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Myrtle Creek has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in August; winter nights fall to about 37° in January. About 31 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Myrtle Creek normally reaches 58° and falls to 41°. The record high is 70°, in 1999; the record low 13°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 1.99 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Riddle, 6 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
