The Richland 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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76° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1944. Next is 73° in 1989.
Richland’s center stands about 400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 330 ft to 620 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jump Off Joe, about 2,190 ft, 15 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Younger glacial drift (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 14×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, clay, volcanic. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Richland reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Columbia: about 330 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 Richland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Richland has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 7 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Richland normally reaches 49° and falls to 34°. The record high is 70°, in 2021; the record low 8°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.25 in, fell in 2016.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1944 at Richland, 2 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
