The Lostine 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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74° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is 68° in 2021.
Lostine’s center stands about 3,370 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,150 ft to 5,540 ft, a difference of 2,390 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Twin Peaks, about 9,560 ft, 13 miles south-southeast.
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 5 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.
Basalt. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Quartz-diorite, granitic, granodiorite. Age: Late Triassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 208 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 237 million years old. About 1 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 Lostine reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Wallowa, the Grande Ronde, the Snake and the Columbia: about 600 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 Lostine; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lostine has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in December. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Lostine normally reaches 46° and falls to 26°. The record high is 68°, in 2021; the record low −3°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.91 in, fell in 1903.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Wallowa, 8 miles northwest, 440 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
