The Hanford 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
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers; cooler
Sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
84° on Nov. 11, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 83° in 1904.
Hanford’s center stands about 240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 220 ft to 250 ft, a difference of 30 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 24 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.
Hanford has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in July; winter nights fall to about 35° in December. About 8 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Hanford normally reaches 67° and falls to 40°. The record high is 80°, in 1939; the record low 21°, in 1938. The most rain on this date, 0.79 in, fell in 2025.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 from the Hanford Area threaded record (Hanford Municipal Airport, 2 miles east-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
