The Kittitas 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.
Kittitas’s center stands about 1,650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,510 ft to 2,000 ft, a difference of 490 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Whiskey Dick Mountain, about 3,880 ft, 9 miles east-northeast.
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 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.
Basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, volcanic. Age: Middle Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 16 million years old. About 0.3 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 Kittitas reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Cooke Creek, Cherry 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 Kittitas; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kittitas 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 Kittitas 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, 6 miles west, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
