The Walla Walla 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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81° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 70° in 1953.
Walla Walla’s center stands about 970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 790 ft to 1,170 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Klicker Mountain, about 3,920 ft, 12 miles east-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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. 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, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 23 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million 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 Walla Walla reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Mill Creek, the Walla Walla and the Columbia: about 350 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 Walla Walla; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Walla Walla has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in December. A normal year brings about 6 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Walla Walla normally reaches 50° and falls to 36°. The record high is 70°, in 1953; the record low 0°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.60 in, fell in 1963.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Walla Walla Regional Airport, 3 miles northeast, 200 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
