The Washington 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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6.06 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 5.60 inches, fell in 1950.
Washington’s center stands about 2,760 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,610 ft to 4,820 ft, a difference of 2,210 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is English Mountain, about 8,320 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Paleozoic marine rocks, undivided, unit 4 (Western Sierra Nevada) (argillite, quartzite, phyllite), from the Ordovician to Triassic, 202 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 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.
Argillite, quartzite, phyllite. Age: Ordovician to Triassic, 202 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Argillite, phyllite. Age: Permian to Jurassic, 145 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, trondhjemite. Age: Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 364 to 400 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Slate, sandstone. Age: Devonian to Late Jurassic, 145 to 422 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. 5 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 Washington reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the South Yuba, the Yuba, the Feather and the Sacramento: about 170 river miles.
75 miles of the trip are on the Sacramento.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Washington; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Washington has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in December. A normal year brings about 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 62 inches of water.
On November 14 Washington normally reaches 58° and falls to 40°. The record high is 83°, in 1933; the record low 18°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 2.90 in, fell in 1981.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Nevada City, 14 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
