The Ashford 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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7.80 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1909. The next wettest, 6.24 inches, fell in 2021.
Ashford’s center stands about 1,770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,530 ft to 4,360 ft, a difference of 2,830 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Rainier, about 14,450 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (silt, sand), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 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 3×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Andesite, basaltic-andesite. Age: Late Eocene, 34 to 38 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 56 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Pliocene to Holocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Early Eocene to Middle Eocene, 38 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 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 Ashford reaches Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean by way of the Nisqually: about 60 river miles.
Lake on the way: Alder Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ashford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ashford has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 76° in August; winter nights fall to about 25° in December. A normal year brings about 143 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 83 inches of water.
On November 14 Ashford normally reaches 43° and falls to 30°. The record high is 63°, in 1933; the record low 9°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 3.12 in, fell in 2001.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1909 at Longmire Rainier Nps, 10 miles east, 980 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
