The Ruch 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, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 75° in 1999.
Ruch’s center stands about 1,690 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,380 ft to 3,690 ft, a difference of 2,310 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Little Red Mountain, about 6,610 ft, 14 miles 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 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.
Metaandesite, metabasalt, spilite. Age: Triassic to Jurassic, 145 to 252 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gravel, boulders, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 Ruch reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Forest Creek, the Applegate and the Rogue: about 130 river miles.
95 miles of the trip are on the Rogue.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ruch; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ruch has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 18 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Ruch normally reaches 54° and falls to 37°. The record high is 68°, in 1934; the record low 11°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 1.43 in, fell in 1963.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 from the Medford Area threaded record (Medford International Airport, 13 miles northeast, 380 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
