The Elk City 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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72° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1914. Next is 69° in 1953.
Elk City’s center stands about 4,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,940 ft to 5,020 ft, a difference of 1,080 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Moose Butte, about 7,150 ft, 10 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sedimentary rocks associated with flood basalts (mixed-clastic), from the Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 17 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Paragneiss, biotite-schist. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 67 to 107 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite, orthogneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.4 to 1.4 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 17 million years old. About 0.8 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 Elk City reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Elk Creek, the American, the South Fork Clearwater, the Clearwater, the Snake and the Columbia: about 600 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
210 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Elk City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elk City has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in December. A normal year brings about 119 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 31 inches of water.
On November 14 Elk City normally reaches 43° and falls to 22°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low −15°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.18 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1914 at Elk City 1 NE, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
