The Port Townsend 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.
Showers likely
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
64° on Nov. 17, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1980. Next is 62° in 1990.
Port Townsend’s center stands about 130 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 320 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Skidder Hill, about 2,150 ft, 14 miles south-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 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Paleocene to Middle Eocene, 40 to 64 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 48 million years old. About 2 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.
Rain that falls on Port Townsend runs straight into Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Port Townsend; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Port Townsend has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 70° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 17 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Port Townsend normally reaches 51° and falls to 35°. The record high is 62°, in 2004; the record low 20°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.94 in, fell in 2015.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1980 at Sequim 2 E, 14 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
