The Colton 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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72° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 71° in 1904.
Colton’s center stands about 2,560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,520 ft to 2,900 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tomer Butte, about 3,490 ft, 14 miles 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 7×. 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. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 67 to 107 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Precambrian to Eocene. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 6 to 18 million years old. About 0.3 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 Colton reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Union Flat Creek, the Palouse, the Snake and the Columbia: about 470 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
210 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Colton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Colton has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in December. About 18 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Colton normally reaches 45° and falls to 33°. The record high is 65°, in 1999; the record low 2°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1906.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Pullman Area threaded record (Pullman Moscow Regional Airport, 12 miles north). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
