The Donald 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. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1946. Next is 72° in 2021.
Donald’s center stands about 870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 820 ft to 1,910 ft, a difference of 1,090 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is High Top, about 3,010 ft, 14 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glaciolacustrine deposits (silt, sand), 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 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.
Silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, volcanic. Age: Middle Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 16 million years old. About 5 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 3 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 Donald reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Yakima and the Columbia: about 430 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 Donald; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Donald 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 Donald 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, 9 miles northwest, 180 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
