The Silver Lake 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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71° on Nov. 11, 1996, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 70° in 1989.
Silver Lake’s center stands about 4,350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,320 ft to 4,550 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hager Mountain, about 7,150 ft, 8 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lacustrine and fluvial sedimentary rocks (clay, silt, sand), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Early Miocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, dacite. Age: Eocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 56 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 23 million years old. About 0.6 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 Silver Lake reaches the desert basins of southern Oregon by way of Silver Creek: about 13 river miles. The desert basins of southern Oregon has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Lake on the way: Silver Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Silver Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Silver Lake has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in December. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 11 inches of water.
On November 14 Silver Lake normally reaches 46° and falls to 24°. The record high is 65°, in 1949; the record low −2°, in 1958. The most rain on this date, 0.46 in, fell in 2016.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at The Poplars, 11 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
