The Williams 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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12° on Nov. 13, 1978, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 15° in 1929.
Williams’s center stands about 1,400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,300 ft to 3,130 ft, a difference of 1,830 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Grayback Mountain, about 7,010 ft, 8 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Fanglomerate (mixed-clastic), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, 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 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.
Quartz-diorite, diorite. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metaandesite, metabasalt, spilite. Age: Triassic to Jurassic, 145 to 252 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gabbro. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gravel, boulders, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 Williams reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Williams Creek, the Applegate and the Rogue: about 120 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 Williams; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Williams has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 35° in January. About 31 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Williams normally reaches 54° and falls to 39°. The record high is 73°, in 1995; the record low 13°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 1.74 in, fell in 1966.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Grants Pass, 14 miles north, 470 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
