The Waitsburg 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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77° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 73° in 2001.
Waitsburg’s center stands about 1,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,180 ft to 1,850 ft, a difference of 670 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Robinette Mountain, about 4,310 ft, 14 miles southeast.
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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 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 Waitsburg reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Touchet, the Walla Walla and the Columbia: about 380 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 Waitsburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Waitsburg has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Waitsburg normally reaches 50° and falls to 31°. The record high is 74°, in 1999; the record low −9°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 1.06 in, fell in 1941.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Dayton 1 WSW, 8 miles east-northeast, 290 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
