The Milton-Freewater 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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82° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1928. Next is 74° in 1989.
Milton-Freewater’s center stands about 1,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 850 ft to 1,530 ft, a difference of 680 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blalock Mountain, about 4,560 ft, 13 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvial deposits (sand, gravel, silt), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 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 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.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 23 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Middle Miocene, 12 to 16 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 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 Milton-Freewater reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Little Walla Walla, the West Little Walla Walla, the Walla Walla and the Columbia: about 350 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 Milton-Freewater; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Milton-Freewater has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Milton-Freewater normally reaches 52° and falls to 36°. The record high is 76°, in 1999; the record low 5°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.41 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1928 at Milton Freewater, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
