The Twisp 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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−10° on Nov. 16, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1906. Next is −8° in 1955.
Twisp’s center stands about 1,590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,520 ft to 4,280 ft, a difference of 2,760 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hoodoo Peak, about 8,400 ft, 13 miles southwest.
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 4 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.
Graywacke, argillite, siltstone. Age: Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Precambrian to Eocene. About 10 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Late Cretaceous to Eocene, 34 to 100 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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.
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 Twisp reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Methow and the Columbia: about 560 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
240 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Twisp; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Twisp has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 59 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 15 inches of water.
On November 14 Twisp normally reaches 42° and falls to 25°. The record high is 60°, in 1917; the record low −1°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.60 in, fell in 2021.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1906 at Winthrop 1 WSW, 8 miles north-northwest, 160 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
