The Sandy 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.
Showers likely
Showers likely
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
67° on Nov. 14, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 66° in 1906.
Sandy’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 340 ft to 1,290 ft, a difference of 950 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Githens Mountain, about 4,550 ft, 14 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sedimentary rocks (sandstone-mudstone), from the Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. 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-mudstone. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Basaltic-andesite, basalt. Age: Early Pliocene to Pleistocene, 1.2 to 3.9 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite, basaltic-andesite. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 10 to 17 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Volcanic, conglomerate, andesite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Silt, sand, gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.6 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 Sandy reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Tickle Creek, Deep Creek, the Clackamas, the Willamette and the Columbia: about 150 river miles.
100 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sandy; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sandy has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in August; winter nights fall to about 35° in January. About 79 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Sandy normally reaches 49° and falls to 40°. The record high is 67°, in 1995; the record low 13°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 2.95 in, fell in 1941.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Headworks Portland Wtr B, 7 miles east-northeast, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
