The Cottonwood 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.
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
68° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1950. Next is 68° in 2016.
Cottonwood’s center stands about 3,550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,280 ft to 4,190 ft, a difference of 910 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cottonwood Butte, about 5,710 ft, 6 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Columbia River Basalt Group (basalt, basaltic-andesite), from the Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 6 to 18 million years old.
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 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 6 to 18 million years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Quartz-diorite. Age: Late Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 90 to 160 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt, rhyolite. Age: Permian to Triassic, 202 to 299 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 Cottonwood reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Cottonwood Creek, the Clearwater, the Snake and the Columbia: about 560 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 Cottonwood; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cottonwood has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in December. A normal year brings about 61 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 23 inches of water.
On November 14 Cottonwood normally reaches 44° and falls to 30°. The record high is 64°, in 1999; the record low 12°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 0.38 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1950 at Cottonwood 2 WSW, 2 miles west-southwest, 400 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
