The Oakridge 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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14° on Nov. 13, 1978, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1914. Next is 17° in 1955.
Oakridge’s center stands about 1,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,090 ft to 3,340 ft, a difference of 2,250 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wolf Mountain, about 6,440 ft, 15 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Undifferentiated tuffaceous sedimentary rocks, tuffs, and basalt (basalt, basaltic-andesite), from the Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 34 million years old.
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 5×. 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, basaltic-andesite. Age: Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 34 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite, basaltic-andesite. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 10 to 17 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Diorite, quartz-diorite. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 22 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt. 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 Oakridge reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Middle Fork Willamette, the Willamette and the Columbia: about 330 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Willamette Falls Hydroelectric Power Reservoir and Lookout Point Lake.
100 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Oakridge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Oakridge has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in August; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. A normal year brings about 5 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Oakridge normally reaches 49° and falls to 35°. The record high is 69°, in 1936; the record low 15°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 1.54 in, fell in 2014.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1914 at Oakridge Fish Hatchery, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
