The Reardan 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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67° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1881. Next is 65° in 1899.
Reardan’s center stands about 2,500 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,420 ft to 2,770 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hanning Butte, about 3,040 ft, 6 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Miocene volcanic rocks (basalt), from the Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. 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 7 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 Reardan reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Crab Creek, Lower Crab Creek and the Columbia: about 600 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Umatilla, Potholes Reservoir and Moses Lake.
210 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Reardan; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Reardan has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in December. A normal year brings about 45 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Reardan normally reaches 43° and falls to 31°. The record high is 65°, in 1899; the record low −7°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.74 in, fell in 1966.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1881 from the Spokane Area threaded record (Spokane International Airport, 17 miles east-southeast, 140 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
