The Pierce 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
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
−5° on Nov. 16, 2022, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1963. Next is −2° in 2014.
Pierce’s center stands about 3,260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,050 ft to 4,180 ft, a difference of 1,130 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hemlock Butte, about 6,050 ft, 8 miles east.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Tonalite, granodiorite, quartz-diorite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 70 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 6 to 18 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 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 Pierce reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Orofino Creek, the Clearwater, the Snake and the Columbia: about 530 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 Pierce; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pierce has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 114 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 43 inches of water.
On November 14 Pierce normally reaches 42° and falls to 25°. The record high is 67°, in 1999; the record low 2°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.77 in, fell in 1987.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1963 at Pierce, here, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
