The Heron 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.
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
64° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1912. Next is 59° in 2021.
Heron’s center stands about 2,260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,170 ft to 5,680 ft, a difference of 3,510 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Saint Paul Peak, about 7,640 ft, 13 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gravel, from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 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.
Metasiltstone, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Quartzite, argillite, metasiltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, argillite, quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Quartzite, metasiltstone, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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 Heron reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Clark Fork, the Pend Oreille and the Columbia: about 870 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pend Oreille and Lake Umatilla.
460 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Heron; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Heron has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 84 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Heron normally reaches 41° and falls to 30°. The record high is 58°, in 2021; the record low 3°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.98 in, fell in 1966.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1912 at Heron 2 NW, 3 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
