The Gaston 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.
Showers likely
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
71° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 68° in 1962.
Gaston’s center stands about 260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 160 ft to 810 ft, a difference of 650 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is South Saddle Mountain, about 3,440 ft, 14 miles northwest.
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 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 38 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Siltstone. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 23 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 Gaston reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Tualatin, the Willamette and the Columbia: about 190 river miles.
Lake on the way: Willamette Falls Hydroelectric Power Reservoir.
100 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gaston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gaston has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in August; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Gaston normally reaches 51° and falls to 36°. The record high is 67°, in 1996; the record low 12°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 3.98 in, fell in 1896.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Forest Grove, 7 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
