The Meacham 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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−16° on Nov. 15, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is −12° in 1955.
Meacham’s center stands about 3,700 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,590 ft to 4,200 ft, a difference of 610 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Thimbleberry Mountain, about 5,620 ft, 13 miles east-northeast.
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.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
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 16 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Middle Miocene, 12 to 16 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Middle Miocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 16 million years old. About 0.9 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 Meacham reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Twomile Creek, Meacham Creek, the Umatilla and the Columbia: about 390 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 Meacham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Meacham has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in December. A normal year brings about 113 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Meacham normally reaches 44° and falls to 26°. The record high is 66°, in 1999; the record low −10°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.59 in, fell in 2001.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Meacham, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
