The Cowiche 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
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
72° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1946. Next is 72° in 2021.
Cowiche’s center stands about 1,750 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,330 ft to 2,400 ft, a difference of 1,070 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cleman Mountain, about 5,060 ft, 12 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary nonmarine deposits (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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.
Basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, volcanic. Age: Middle Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 16 million years old. About 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 Cowiche reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of North Fork Cowiche Creek, Cowiche Creek, the Naches, the Yakima and the Columbia: about 460 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 Cowiche; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cowiche has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in December. A normal year brings about 20 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 8 inches of water.
On November 14 Cowiche normally reaches 50° and falls to 27°. The record high is 72°, in 2021; the record low 0°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.66 in, fell in 2020.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1946 from the Yakima Area threaded record (Yakima Airport, 11 miles southeast, 700 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
