The Salmon 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. 15, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1967. Next is 63° in 1984.
Salmon’s center stands about 3,950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,890 ft to 5,360 ft, a difference of 1,470 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Homer Youngs Peak, about 10,550 ft, 14 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvial deposits (gravel, sand, silt), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
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 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Quartzite, metasiltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated, mixed-clastic. Age: Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 56 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite, metasiltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.4 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 Salmon reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Salmon, the Snake and the Columbia: about 760 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
260 miles of the trip are on the Salmon.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Salmon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Salmon has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 22 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 10 inches of water.
On November 14 Salmon normally reaches 42° and falls to 22°. The record high is 63°, in 2025; the record low 2°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.28 in, fell in 2014.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1967 at Salmon-Ksra, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
