The Wasco 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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1° on Nov. 15, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 2° in 1955.
Wasco’s center stands about 1,290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,100 ft to 1,690 ft, a difference of 590 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Haystack Butte, about 2,940 ft, 12 miles west-northwest.
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 8×. 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, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Middle Miocene, 12 to 16 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 23 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 Wasco reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Columbia: about 220 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wasco; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wasco has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 17 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 11 inches of water.
On November 14 Wasco normally reaches 49° and falls to 29°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low 2°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.55 in, fell in 1965.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Moro, 8 miles south, 580 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
