The Notus 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
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
69° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1922. Next is 68° in 1953.
Notus’s center stands about 2,320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,270 ft to 2,440 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Brown Butte, about 2,930 ft, 15 miles west.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 33×. 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.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 17 million years old. About 4 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 Notus reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Boise, the Snake and the Columbia: about 720 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 Notus; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Notus has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 10 inches of water.
On November 14 Notus normally reaches 49° and falls to 28°. The record high is 68°, in 1953; the record low 9°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1922 at Parma Experiment Station, 9 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
