The Wilbur 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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69° on Nov. 11, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 62° in 1990.
Wilbur’s center stands about 2,170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,110 ft to 2,390 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jack Woods Butte, about 2,820 ft, 11 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Miocene volcanic rocks (basalt), from the Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million 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 13×. 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 14 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million 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 Wilbur reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Goose Creek, Wilson Creek, Crab Creek, Lower Crab Creek and the Columbia: about 550 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Umatilla, Potholes Reservoir and Moses Lake.
210 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wilbur; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wilbur has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in December. About 12 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Wilbur normally reaches 43° and falls to 26°. The record high is 60°, in 1953; the record low −1°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.99 in, fell in 1966.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Wilbur, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
