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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
83° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 82° in 1999.
Washington’s center stands about 1,330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,270 ft to 1,410 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dakota Formation (claystone, mudstone, shale), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old.
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 50×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Claystone, mudstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 3 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 Washington reaches the Gulf of America by way of Plum Creek, Mill Creek, the Little Blue, the Big Blue, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,800 river miles.
Lake on the way: Tuttle Creek Lake.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
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 humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Washington normally reaches 53° and falls to 29°. The record high is 78°, in 2025; the record low 4°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.75 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Washington, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
