The Metaline 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.
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
57° on Nov. 12, 1990, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1965. Next is 57° in 1999.
Metaline’s center stands about 2,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,980 ft to 5,700 ft, a difference of 3,720 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Abercrombie Mountain, about 7,280 ft, 6 miles north-northwest.
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 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.
Quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Phyllite, quartzite. Age: Early Cambrian to Middle Cambrian, 497 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Precambrian to Eocene. About 6 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Early Cambrian to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, 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 Metaline reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Linton Creek, the Pend Oreille and the Columbia: about 740 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 Metaline; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Metaline 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 Metaline 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, 10 miles north, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
