The Hazel Dell 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.
69° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1856. Next is 68° in 1899.
Hazel Dell’s center stands about 210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 310 ft, a difference of 310 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Elkhorn Mountain, about 2,240 ft, 15 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary nonmarine deposits (sandstone, clay, volcanic), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 16×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, clay, volcanic. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Silt, 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. 4 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Hazel Dell reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Cougar Canyon Creek, Salmon Creek and the Columbia: about 100 river miles.
85 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hazel Dell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hazel Dell has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in August; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Hazel Dell normally reaches 52° and falls to 36°. The record high is 68°, in 1899; the record low 15°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 2.33 in, fell in 1966.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1856 at Vancouver 4 NNE, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.