The South Cle Elum 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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3.40 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1899. The next wettest, 3.16 inches, fell in 1906.
South Cle Elum’s center stands about 1,930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,870 ft to 3,730 ft, a difference of 1,860 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jolly Mountain, about 6,380 ft, 14 miles north-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 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Arkose. Age: Eocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 56 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Oligocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Proterozoic to Devonian, 359 to 2,500 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Late Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 38 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 smaller units 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 South Cle Elum reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Yakima and the Columbia: about 510 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 South Cle Elum; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
South Cle Elum has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. About 25 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 South Cle Elum normally reaches 44° and falls to 28°. The record high is 66°, in 1905; the record low 4°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 1.03 in, fell in 1906.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Cle Elum, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
