The Thurston 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
81° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 79° in 1930.
Thurston’s center stands about 1,410 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,330 ft to 1,520 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dakota Group (sandstone, shale), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 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 54×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 6 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 Thurston reaches the Gulf of America by way of Middle Creek, the Logan Creek Dredge, the Elkhorn, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,890 river miles.
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 Thurston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Thurston has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 31 inches of water.
On November 14 Thurston normally reaches 49° and falls to 24°. The record high is 79°, in 1930; the record low −18°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Wakefield 3 NW, 13 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
