The Marsing 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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3° on Nov. 17, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1990. Next is 12° in 2000.
Marsing’s center stands about 2,280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,210 ft to 2,670 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tims Peak, about 5,200 ft, 15 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lake Bonneville deposits (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 33,000 years old.
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 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 33,000 years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic, volcanic. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Middle Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 14 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 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.
Mixed-clastic. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 17 million years old. About 0.7 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 Marsing reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of 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 Marsing; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Marsing 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 Marsing 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, 7 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
