Warm Spring
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
On the Modoc National Forest in Siskiyou County, a Warm Spring sits about 28 miles from Tulelake with nothing more than its name and a warm tag to describe the water. No temperature was ever logged on file. Forest Service ground, public access open. This is a forest water source, a stop on a back road, and the record gives no hint of a pool.
Forest road 46540D comes closest, and the spring lies a walk of under half a mile beyond it. Elevation runs past five thousand feet, high enough that winter buries the area under well over sixty inches of snow. Summers are dry and cool for California. No campground is listed nearby, and no fee.
The record gives no best months, so let the snow decide: the forest road will be under snow in deep winter. Access open. With no temperature logged, a soak is off the table. Tulelake is the nearest town and a long drive, and there is no camping on record between here and there.
Aircraft with laser scanners measured this ground to within inches. The scan strips out trees and buildings, leaving the bare shape of the land around Warm Spring.
- Setting
- Open ground
- Flat, open ground all around.
- Highest ground nearby
- 8 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the north
A slice through the ground from northwest to southeast, about 0.6 miles end to end.
Elevation data: USGS 3D Elevation Program. Aerial imagery: USGS The National Map. Public domain.
That's about 1½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 22% of the springs on this site.
Heat flow measures the warmth working its way up through the ground from deep inside the earth. Where it runs high, rain and snowmelt that seep down through cracks in the rock come back up hot.
See every spring on the geothermal heat map →
Heat flow estimate: Stanford Thermal Earth Model (Aljubran & Horne, 2024), CC BY 4.0.
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