The Electric City 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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63° on Nov. 14, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1934. Next is 62° in 1953.
Electric City’s center stands about 1,650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,260 ft to 2,430 ft, a difference of 1,170 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Keller Butte, about 4,790 ft, 14 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary nonmarine deposits (silt), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite. Age: Precambrian to Eocene. About 9 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 Electric City reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Devils Punch Bowl, Crab Creek, Lower Crab Creek and the Columbia: about 540 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Devils Punch Bowl, Lake Umatilla, Potholes Reservoir and Moses Lake.
210 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Electric City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Electric City has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 11 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Electric City normally reaches 43° and falls to 31°. The record high is 63°, in 2021; the record low 1°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.55 in, fell in 1963.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1934 at Coulee Dam 1 SW, 2 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
