The Prospect 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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74° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1905. Next is 74° in 2016.
Prospect’s center stands about 2,580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,150 ft to 4,300 ft, a difference of 2,150 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Union Peak, about 7,460 ft, 15 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mazama ash-flow deposits (dacite, andesite), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basaltic-andesite, basalt. Age: Late Miocene to Early Pliocene, 4 to 9 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, boulders. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 34 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Basaltic-andesite, basalt. Age: Early Pliocene to Pleistocene, 1.2 to 3.9 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dacite, andesite. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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. 4 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 Prospect reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Mill Creek and the Rogue: about 170 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lost Creek Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Prospect; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Prospect has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. A normal year brings about 21 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Prospect normally reaches 55° and falls to 34°. The record high is 72°, in 2018; the record low 12°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 1.50 in, fell in 1911.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 at Prospect 2 SW, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
