The Moscow 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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72° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 71° in 1904.
Moscow’s center stands about 2,590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,520 ft to 2,970 ft, a difference of 450 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Moscow Mountain, about 4,970 ft, 8 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sedimentary rocks associated with flood basalts (mixed-clastic), from the Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 17 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 67 to 107 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 17 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 6 to 18 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Precambrian to Eocene. About 0.4 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 Moscow reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Paradise Creek, the South Fork Palouse, the Palouse, the Snake and the Columbia: about 500 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 Moscow; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Moscow has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in December. About 18 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Moscow normally reaches 45° and falls to 33°. The record high is 65°, in 1999; the record low 2°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1906.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Pullman Area threaded record (Pullman Moscow Regional Airport, 6 miles west). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
