The Monroe 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 1929. Next is 18° in 1978.
Monroe’s center stands about 70 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 10 ft to 1,090 ft, a difference of 1,080 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sultan Ridge, about 3,110 ft, 14 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 5 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.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 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 Monroe reaches Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean by way of French Creek and the Snohomish: about 20 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Monroe; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Monroe has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in August; winter nights fall to about 31° in December. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Monroe normally reaches 49° and falls to 36°. The record high is 67°, in 1995; the record low 9°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 1.92 in, fell in 2001.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1929 at Monroe, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
