The Gooding 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
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Showers likely; cooler
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72° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1908. Next is 70° in 1934.
Gooding’s center stands about 3,570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,510 ft to 3,760 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Turkey Head Butte, about 3,940 ft, 8 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvial deposits (gravel, sand, silt), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 16×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Middle Miocene to Late Pliocene, 3 to 15 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 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 Gooding reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Little Wood, the Malad, the Snake and the Columbia: about 910 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Umatilla, Brownlee Reservoir, Cove Arm Lake 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 Gooding; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gooding has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 10 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Gooding normally reaches 50° and falls to 32°. The record high is 68°, in 2016; the record low 3°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.71 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1908 at Shoshone 1 WNW, 15 miles east, 380 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
