The Pronghorn 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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−8° on Nov. 16, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1991. Next is 11° in 2018.
Pronghorn’s center stands about 3,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,090 ft to 3,310 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Powell Buttes, about 5,210 ft, 10 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Basalt and basaltic andesite (basalt, basaltic-andesite), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. 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, basaltic-andesite. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, dacite. Age: Late Eocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 38 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basaltic-andesite, basalt, andesite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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. 2 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 Pronghorn reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Deschutes and the Columbia: about 340 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Billy Chinook.
200 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pronghorn; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pronghorn has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in December. A normal year brings about 11 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 9 inches of water.
On November 14 Pronghorn normally reaches 49° and falls to 28°. The record high is 72°, in 1999; the record low 13°, in 1993. The most rain on this date, 0.85 in, fell in 2014.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1991 at Bend 7 NE, 5 miles south-southwest, 160 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
