The Sunnyslope 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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70° on Nov. 14, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1959. Next is 67° in 2015.
Sunnyslope’s center stands about 1,880 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 4,080 ft, a difference of 3,460 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Lillian, about 6,150 ft, 15 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pre-Upper Jurassic gneiss, from the Precambrian to Eocene.
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 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Eocene. About 12 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Late Cretaceous to Eocene, 34 to 100 million years old. About 2 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.
Serpentinite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 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. 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 Sunnyslope reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Wenatchee and the Columbia: about 470 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 Sunnyslope; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sunnyslope has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. About 8 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Sunnyslope normally reaches 44° and falls to 31°. The record high is 70°, in 2021; the record low 13°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 0.35 in, fell in 1981.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1959 at Wenatchee Pangborn Memorial Airport, 10 miles southeast, 640 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
