The Wheeler 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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68° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 67° in 2021.
Wheeler’s center stands about 1,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,160 ft to 1,380 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glaciolacustrine deposits (silt, sand), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million 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 31×. 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 9 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, clay, volcanic. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 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 Wheeler reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Potholes Reservoir, Lower Crab Creek and the Columbia: about 460 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Umatilla and Potholes Reservoir.
210 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wheeler; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wheeler has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. About 8 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Wheeler normally reaches 47° and falls to 29°. The record high is 67°, in 2021; the record low 4°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.41 in, fell in 1963.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Moses Lake Grant County Airport, 8 miles west-northwest, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
