Washington · Western Mountains & Interior Plateaus
Where your water goes
Your sub-basin
Spokane
then
Columbia River
It arrives here
Pacific Ocean
West, down some of the steepest drainage on the continent, and then straight into the Pacific. These are the salmon rivers: five species run up them from the sea to spawn and die, and the carcasses carry ocean nitrogen back into the forest.
Basin 170103 (USGS hydrologic unit)
The river right now
145%
of the ten-year median for this date · 13.4 m³/s against 9.2 normally
highRunning high for the date. Water will be pushy and coloured, fish will be tucked into the slack water at the edges and behind obstructions, and crossings that are normally easy are not. It is steady through the week ahead.
Under your feet
About 3 million years old — from the ice ages and since — the most recent chapter.
All the kinds of rock, and how each one forms →
Quaternary sedimentary · Quaternary
Missoula, glacial Lake, deposits of · Pleistocene
Bedrock and soil figures are modelled from national geological surveys and global soil mapping, at a resolution of a few hundred metres — right for the shape of a district, not for a particular garden. River discharge is modelled, not gauged. For anything that matters, dig a hole and look.
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Glacial outburst flood deposits · Pleistocene
Younger glacial drift · Pleistocene
Cenozoic volcanic rocks · Neogene
The soil it made
What that means
The sweet spot for a vegetable garden. Nearly every nutrient is at its most available somewhere in this band, which is why it is the number every soil guide tells you to aim at.
Happy here without a fight
Almost everything: tomatoes, beans, squash, lettuce, apples, most perennials and most lawn grasses.
If you want the rest
Nothing needed. Compost keeps it here; heavy lime would push it past useful.
Working it
A balance of sand, silt and clay — the texture that holds enough water to matter and still drains, which is why loam is the one everybody wants.