The Parma 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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69° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1922. Next is 68° in 1953.
Parma’s center stands about 2,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,200 ft to 2,510 ft, a difference of 310 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blackjack Butte, about 3,630 ft, 13 miles southwest.
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 28×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mixed-clastic. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 17 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 33,000 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, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 0.3 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 Parma reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Sand Hollow Creek, the Snake and the Columbia: about 710 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 Parma; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Parma 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 Parma 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, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
