The Irrigon 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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76° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1971. Next is 72° in 2001.
Irrigon’s center stands about 300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 260 ft to 620 ft, a difference of 360 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ward Butte, about 930 ft, 13 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glaciofluvial, lacustrine, and pediment sedimentary deposits (silt, sand, gravel), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 19×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Silt, sand, gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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 Irrigon reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Columbia: about 280 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 Irrigon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Irrigon has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 9 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Irrigon normally reaches 52° and falls to 33°. The record high is 76°, in 1999; the record low 8°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1971 at Boardman, 10 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
