The Heppner 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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79° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 77° in 1990.
Heppner’s center stands about 2,260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,830 ft to 2,870 ft, a difference of 1,040 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Warm Hill, about 4,250 ft, 15 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Grande Ronde Basalt, from the Early Miocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 23 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 23 million years old. About 24 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 Heppner reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Willow Creek and the Columbia: about 300 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 Heppner; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Heppner has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in December. A normal year brings about 13 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 13 inches of water.
On November 14 Heppner normally reaches 52° and falls to 32°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low 4°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.56 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Heppner, here, 380 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
