The Baker City 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.
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
72° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1928. Next is 66° in 2016.
Baker City’s center stands about 3,450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,380 ft to 4,600 ft, a difference of 1,220 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rock Creek Butte, about 9,040 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvial deposits (sand, gravel, silt), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Argillite, chert, phyllite. Age: Permian to Triassic, 202 to 299 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gabbro. Age: Permian to Triassic, 202 to 299 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, boulders, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Baker City reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Powder River, the Snake and the Columbia: about 720 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 Baker City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Baker City has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. About 9 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Baker City normally reaches 48° and falls to 25°. The record high is 65°, in 1999; the record low −15°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.44 in, fell in 1941.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1928 from the Baker City Area threaded record (Baker City Airport, 5 miles north-northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
