The Rainier 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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3.49 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1925. The next wettest, 3.36 inches, fell in 2021.
Rainier’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 1,030 ft, a difference of 1,030 ft: steep hill country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Goble Mountain, about 2,610 ft, 13 miles east.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Late Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 38 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Eocene, 34 to 38 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Late Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 38 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.8 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 Rainier reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Fox Creek and the Columbia: about 65 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rainier; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rainier has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in August; winter nights fall to about 35° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Rainier normally reaches 53° and falls to 39°. The record high is 68°, in 1999; the record low 12°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 1.65 in, fell in 2001.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1925 at Longview, 4 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
