The Prescott 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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81° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 70° in 1953.
Prescott’s center stands about 1,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 990 ft to 1,740 ft, a difference of 750 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rice Hill, about 1,350 ft, 15 miles west-northwest.
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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 17×. 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. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 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 Prescott reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Touchet, the Walla Walla and the Columbia: about 370 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 Prescott; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Prescott has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in December. A normal year brings about 6 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Prescott normally reaches 50° and falls to 36°. The record high is 70°, in 1953; the record low 0°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.60 in, fell in 1963.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Walla Walla Regional Airport, 14 miles south, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
