The Tacoma 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
79° on Nov. 12, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1955. Next is 76° in 2020.
Tacoma’s center stands about 2,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,000 ft to 3,400 ft, a difference of 1,400 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is High Knob, about 4,200 ft, 6 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Norton Formation (shale, siltstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 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.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Arenite, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million 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 Tacoma reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Guest, the Clinch, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,820 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Guntersville Lake, White Lake (historical), Pickwick Lake and Cummings Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Tacoma; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tacoma has a oceanic climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 47 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 52 inches of water.
On November 14 Tacoma normally reaches 56° and falls to 34°. The record high is 75°, in 1993; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.55 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1955 at Wise 1 SE, 3 miles north-northwest, 560 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
