The Nespelem Community 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.
Nespelem Community’s center stands about 2,600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 950 ft to 3,230 ft, a difference of 2,280 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Moses Mountain, about 6,750 ft, 14 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mesozoic granitic rocks, undivided (granite), from the Precambrian to Eocene.
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 5×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Andesite, dacite. Age: Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 56 million years old. About 1 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 Nespelem Community reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Columbia: about 570 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
300 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Nespelem Community; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Nespelem Community 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 Nespelem Community 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, 15 miles south, 880 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
