The Garfield 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. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 71° in 1904.
Garfield’s center stands about 2,490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,420 ft to 2,700 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mission Mountain, about 4,340 ft, 10 miles east-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 5 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.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 6 to 18 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 Garfield reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Silver Creek, the Palouse, the Snake and the Columbia: about 480 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 Garfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Garfield has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in December. About 18 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Garfield normally reaches 45° and falls to 33°. The record high is 65°, in 1999; the record low 2°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1906.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Pullman Area threaded record (Pullman Moscow Regional Airport, 18 miles south). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
