The Melba 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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75° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1935. Next is 73° in 1953.
Melba’s center stands about 2,650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,360 ft to 2,820 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Soldier Cap, about 5,390 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Basalt (Pleistocene and Pliocene), from the Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3 million 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 7×. 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 15 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 33,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 67 to 107 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic, volcanic. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Middle Miocene to Late Pliocene, 3 to 15 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 Melba reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Snake and the Columbia: about 760 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 Melba; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Melba has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. About 8 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Melba normally reaches 52° and falls to 31°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low 16°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.59 in, fell in 1965.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1935 at Swan Falls Ph, 12 miles southeast, 320 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
