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.
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2° on Nov. 16, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1994. Next is 4° in 2019.
Washington’s center stands about 1,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,100 ft to 1,300 ft, a difference of 200 ft: 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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 55×. 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 22 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.5 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 Washington reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Papillion Creek, Papillion Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,790 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 Washington; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Washington has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 32 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Washington normally reaches 51° and falls to 31°. The record high is 84°, in 1999; the record low 7°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.13 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1994 at Valley Nws, 10 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
