The Desert Aire 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. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1956. Next is 69° in 1976.
Desert Aire’s center stands about 560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 440 ft to 1,270 ft, a difference of 830 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hog Ranch Buttes, about 4,170 ft, 9 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Younger glacial drift (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 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: Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Eocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, clay, volcanic. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, volcanic. Age: Middle Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 16 million 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 Desert Aire reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Columbia: about 400 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 Desert Aire; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Desert Aire has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 8 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Desert Aire normally reaches 50° and falls to 36°. The record high is 69°, in 2001; the record low 16°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.59 in, fell in 1981.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1956 at Priest Rapids Dam, 2 miles south-southeast, 130 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
