The Spokane 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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83° on Nov. 13, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1898. Next is 82° in 1964.
Spokane’s center stands about 1,330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,060 ft to 1,360 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Osagean Series (limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 34×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 Spokane reaches the Gulf of America by way of Camp Creek, the Woods Fork, Bull Creek, the White River and the Mississippi: about 1,150 river miles.
620 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Spokane; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Spokane has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Spokane normally reaches 59° and falls to 33°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 13°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 2.71 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1898 at Galena, 10 miles west-southwest, 300 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
