The Ritzville 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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69° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 65° in 1953.
Ritzville’s center stands about 1,860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,750 ft to 1,940 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 44×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 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.
Ritzville has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in December. A normal year brings about 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 13 inches of water.
On November 14 Ritzville normally reaches 46° and falls to 29°. The record high is 67°, in 1999; the record low −10°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Ritzville 1 SSE, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
