The Newport 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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−14° on Nov. 16, 1955, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1909. Next is −10° in 1959.
Newport’s center stands about 2,130 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,030 ft to 2,960 ft, a difference of 930 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ojibway Knoll, about 5,160 ft, 15 miles north-northwest.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 20,000 years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Argillite, siltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,600 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.
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 Newport reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Little Spokane, the Spokane and the Columbia: about 740 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
360 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Newport; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Newport has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in February. About 28 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Newport normally reaches 40° and falls to 29°. The record high is 55°, in 2001; the record low 1°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.18 in, fell in 1927.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1909 at Newport, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
