The St. John 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
Showers likely
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−14° on Nov. 15, 1955, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 0° in 1916.
St. John’s center stands about 1,960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,880 ft to 2,280 ft, a difference of 400 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Steptoe Butte, about 3,590 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 17×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.6 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 St. John reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Pleasant Valley Creek, Cottonwood Creek, Rock Creek, the Palouse, the Snake and the Columbia: about 450 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 St. John; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
St. John has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in August; winter nights fall to about 24° in December. A normal year brings about 26 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 St. John normally reaches 46° and falls to 30°. The record high is 65°, in 1999; the record low −3°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.78 in, fell in 1903.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Rosalia, 14 miles northeast, 460 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
