Alberta · Western Mountains & Interior Plateaus · sandstone country
Fall · September 16, 2026
Fort McMurray, Alberta
Where your water goes
Your sub-basin
Central Athabasca - Lower
then
Mackenzie River
It arrives here
Arctic Ocean
North, to a frozen ocean, through country where the ground itself is still partly frozen. Rivers on this side run hard for a few weeks after break-up and quietly the rest of the year, and they are getting longer summers than they used to.
Basin 07C (Canadian sub-drainage area)
The river right now
134%
of the ten-year median for this date · 122 m³/s against 90.9 normally
highRunning high for the date. Water will be pushy and coloured, fish will be tucked into the slack water at the edges and behind obstructions, and crossings that are normally easy are not. It is steady through the week ahead.
Under your feet
About 101 million years old — from the age of the dinosaurs.
All the kinds of rock, and how each one forms →
Mesozoic sedimentary rocks · Late Cretaceous
McMurray Formation · Early Cretaceous
Bedrock and soil figures are modelled from national geological surveys and global soil mapping, at a resolution of a few hundred metres — right for the shape of a district, not for a particular garden. River discharge is modelled, not gauged. For anything that matters, dig a hole and look.
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Late Devonian sedimentary · Late Devonian
Moberly Member of Waterways Formation · Frasnian
The soil it made
What that means
Easy ground for most vegetables and fruit. Iron and manganese start to get harder to reach at the top of this band, which shows up as yellowing between the veins on young leaves.
Happy here without a fight
Brassicas, beets, spinach, peas, lilacs, clematis and most herbs. Hydrangeas come out pink.
If you want the rest
Leave it. If acid-lovers are the point, grow them in containers or a made-up bed rather than fighting the whole garden.
Working it
A balance of sand, silt and clay — the texture that holds enough water to matter and still drains, which is why loam is the one everybody wants.