The Keller 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.
Keller’s center stands about 1,500 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,260 ft to 3,030 ft, a difference of 1,770 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Keller Butte, about 4,790 ft, 5 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glacial drift, undivided (sand, gravel), 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 6×. 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 16 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Andesite, dacite. Age: Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 56 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Graywacke, quartzite. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 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 Keller reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Jack Creek, the Sanpoil and the Columbia: about 620 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
330 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Keller; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Keller 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 Keller 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, 17 miles west-southwest, 220 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
