The Orchards 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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71° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1940. Next is 68° in 1976.
Orchards’s center stands about 270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 190 ft to 370 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Silver Star Mountain, about 4,340 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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Late Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 38 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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.
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 Orchards reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Burnt Bridge Creek and the Columbia: about 110 river miles.
Lake on the way: Vancouver Lake.
85 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Orchards; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Orchards has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Orchards normally reaches 54° and falls to 41°. The record high is 67°, in 2001; the record low 15°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 1.28 in, fell in 1948.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 from the Portland Area threaded record (Portland International Airport, 7 miles south-southwest, 250 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
