The Nehalem 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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7.62 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1930. The next wettest, 4.84 inches, fell in 2001.
Nehalem’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 1,480 ft, a difference of 1,480 ft: steep hill country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Triangulation Point, about 3,250 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Basalt. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Late Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 38 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 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 Nehalem reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Nehalem: about 7 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Nehalem; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Nehalem has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 67° in September; winter nights fall to about 38° in February. About 77 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Nehalem normally reaches 55° and falls to 42°. The record high is 68°, in 1995; the record low 14°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 4.72 in, fell in 2015.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1930 at Seaside, 19 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
