The Wilson Creek 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.
Wilson Creek’s center stands about 1,280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,260 ft to 1,710 ft, a difference of 450 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Butte, about 1,550 ft, 11 miles west.
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 27×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 28 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 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 Wilson Creek reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Wilson Creek, Crab Creek, Lower Crab Creek and the Columbia: about 510 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 Wilson Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wilson Creek 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 Wilson Creek 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, 18 miles south-southwest, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
