The Caldwell 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
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Chance of showers
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3° on Nov. 17, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1990. Next is 12° in 2000.
Caldwell’s center stands about 2,370 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,330 ft to 2,480 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pickles Butte, about 3,070 ft, 12 miles south.
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 34×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 33,000 years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 17 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic, volcanic. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3 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 Caldwell reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Upper Embankment Drain, Indian Creek, the Boise, the Snake and the Columbia: about 740 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Umatilla, Brownlee Reservoir and Hells Canyon Reservoir.
240 miles of the trip are on the Snake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Caldwell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Caldwell has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 10 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Caldwell normally reaches 50° and falls to 29°. The record high is 65°, in 2025; the record low 16°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.34 in, fell in 2014.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1990 at Homedale 1 SE, 12 miles west-southwest, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
