The Ione 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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57° on Nov. 12, 1990, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1965. Next is 57° in 1999.
Ione’s center stands about 2,090 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,030 ft to 4,100 ft, a difference of 2,070 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Abercrombie Mountain, about 7,280 ft, 13 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glacial drift, undivided (sand, gravel), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Granite. Age: Precambrian to Eocene. About 15 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite, quartzite. Age: Early Cambrian to Middle Cambrian, 497 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Early Cambrian to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Ione reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Big Muddy Creek, the Pend Oreille and the Columbia: about 750 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
460 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ione; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ione has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in August; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 55 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 28 inches of water.
On November 14 Ione normally reaches 41° and falls to 29°. The record high is 57°, in 2016; the record low 9°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.83 in, fell in 1966.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1965 at Boundary Dam, 18 miles north, 250 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
