The Riggins 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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80° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 71° in 2025.
Riggins’s center stands about 1,830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,730 ft to 4,790 ft, a difference of 3,060 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is She Devil, about 9,280 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Schist, gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Permian to Cretaceous, 66 to 299 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Basalt, rhyolite. Age: Permian to Triassic, 202 to 299 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Age: Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, 198 to 202 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 6 to 18 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Permian to Triassic, 202 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, tonalite, quartz-diorite. Age: Late Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 87 to 160 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Riggins reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Salmon, the Snake and the Columbia: about 590 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
210 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Riggins; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Riggins has a oceanic climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 17 inches of water.
On November 14 Riggins normally reaches 49° and falls to 30°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 9°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.60 in, fell in 1903.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Riggins, 6 miles southwest, 230 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
