The Colville 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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−5° on Nov. 17, 1903, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 2° in 1916.
Colville’s center stands about 1,650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,540 ft to 3,110 ft, a difference of 1,570 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gillette Mountain, about 5,760 ft, 11 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glacial drift, undivided (sand, gravel), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Phyllite, quartzite. Age: Early Cambrian to Middle Cambrian, 497 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Slate, argillite. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Greenstone. Age: Late Devonian to Middle Jurassic, 164 to 384 million years old. About 0.1 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 Colville reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Colville and the Columbia: about 700 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
410 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Colville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Colville has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in August; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
On November 14 Colville normally reaches 44° and falls to 29°. The record high is 58°, in 2015; the record low 6°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.59 in, fell in 1921.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Colville 5 NE, 5 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
