The Murtaugh 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 1917. Next is 71° in 1934.
Murtaugh’s center stands about 4,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,880 ft to 4,330 ft, a difference of 450 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sugarloaf, about 5,750 ft, 14 miles 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 3 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.
Rhyolite. Age: Middle Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 14 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 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 Murtaugh reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Snake and the Columbia: about 950 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 Murtaugh; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Murtaugh has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 10 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Murtaugh normally reaches 49° and falls to 27°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low 5°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.66 in, fell in 1952.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1917 from the Burley Area threaded record (Burley Municipal Airport, 20 miles east). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
