The Ellensburg 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. 15, 1955, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −4° in 1911.
Ellensburg’s center stands about 1,560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,470 ft to 1,770 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country.
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 4 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.
Basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, volcanic. Age: Middle Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 16 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Eocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 56 million years old. About 0.5 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 Ellensburg reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Wilson Creek, the Yakima and the Columbia: about 490 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 Ellensburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ellensburg has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. About 9 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ellensburg normally reaches 46° and falls to 26°. The record high is 68°, in 1896; the record low 1°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 1981.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Ellensburg, 2 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
