The Payette 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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−2° on Nov. 15, 1955, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is −1° in 1916.
Payette’s center stands about 2,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,120 ft to 2,550 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sagebrush Hill, about 3,340 ft, 13 miles north.
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 15×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 33,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 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 Payette reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Payette, the Snake and the Columbia: about 680 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 Payette; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Payette has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. About 11 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Payette normally reaches 52° and falls to 31°. The record high is 71°, in 1896; the record low 0°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.65 in, fell in 1965.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Payette, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
