The Ashton 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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69° on Nov. 11, 1934, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 62° in 1897.
Ashton’s center stands about 5,260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,150 ft to 5,380 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is High Point, about 7,280 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glacial deposits (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Rhyolite. Age: Pleistocene, 0.6 to 2 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3 million years old. About 3 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 Ashton reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Henrys Fork, the Snake and the Columbia: about 1,200 river miles.
Lakes on the way: American Falls Reservoir, Lake Umatilla, Brownlee Reservoir and Cove Arm Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ashton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ashton has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 70 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
On November 14 Ashton normally reaches 41° and falls to 23°. The record high is 63°, in 1934; the record low −4°, in 1956. The most rain on this date, 0.91 in, fell in 1991.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Ashton 1 N, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
