Geography and Climate
Olympia is located at 47°2′33″N 122°53′35″W / 47.04250°N 122.89306°W / 47.04250; -122.89306 (47.042418, −122.893077).
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 19.68 square miles (50.97 km2), of which, 17.82 sq mi (46.15 km2) is land and 1.86 sq mi (4.82 km2) is water.
The city of Olympia is located at the southern end of Puget Sound on Budd Inlet. The Deschutes River estuary was dammed in 1951 to create Capitol Lake. Much of the lower area of downtown Olympia sits on reclaimed land. The cities of Lacey and Tumwater border Olympia.
Olympia has a Marine West Coast climate (Köppen Csb), though sometimes characterized as Mediterranean. Most of western Washington's weather is brought in by weather systems that form near the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. It contains cold moist air, which brings western Washington cold rain, cloudiness, and fog. November through January are Olympia's rainiest months. City streets, creeks, and rivers often flood during the months of November through February. Olympia's yearly snowfall for the 1981–2010 period averaged 7.6 inches (19.3 cm). Olympia averages 49.81 inches (1,270 mm) of precipitation annually and has a year-round average of 75% cloud cover. According to one MSNBC study, Olympia had more rainy days per year on average over the past 30 years than any city in the lower 48 states. With a period of record dating back to 1948, extreme temperatures have ranged from −8 °F (−22 °C) on January 1, 1979, up to 104 °F (40 °C), most recently on July 29, 2009; there are six days annually with temperatures reaching 90 °F (32 °C), 1.8 days where the temperature stays at or below freezing all day and 78 nights where the low reaches the freezing mark.
| Climate data for Olympia, Washington (1981–2010 normals) | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Average high °F (°C) | 46.2 (7.9) |
49.6 (9.8) |
54.3 (12.4) |
59.2 (15.1) |
65.6 (18.7) |
70.9 (21.6) |
77.1 (25.1) |
78 (25.6) |
72.2 (22.3) |
60.5 (15.8) |
50.5 (10.3) |
44.5 (6.9) |
60.7 (15.9) |
| Average low °F (°C) | 33 (0.6) |
32.1 (0.1) |
34.4 (1.3) |
37.1 (2.8) |
42.5 (5.8) |
47 (8.3) |
50.2 (10.1) |
49.9 (9.9) |
45.4 (7.4) |
39.9 (4.4) |
35.8 (2.1) |
32 (0) |
39.9 (4.4) |
| Precipitation inches (mm) | 7.74 (196.6) |
5.27 (133.9) |
5.29 (134.4) |
3.54 (89.9) |
2.33 (59.2) |
1.76 (44.7) |
0.63 (16) |
0.93 (23.6) |
1.71 (43.4) |
4.59 (116.6) |
8.63 (219.2) |
7.40 (188) |
49.81 (1,265.2) |
| Snowfall inches (cm) | 1.4 (3.6) |
3.3 (8.4) |
0.5 (1.3) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0.6 (1.5) |
1.7 (4.3) |
7.6 (19.3) |
| Avg. precipitation days (≥ 0.01 in) | 20.0 | 15.8 | 18.5 | 15.7 | 12.5 | 9.1 | 4.6 | 4.9 | 7.8 | 14.2 | 20.1 | 19.6 | 162.8 |
| Avg. snowy days (≥ 0.1 in) | 0.9 | 1.6 | 0.3 | 0.1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.4 | 1.4 | 4.7 |
| Source: NOAA | |||||||||||||
Read more about this topic: Doug Mah
Famous quotes containing the words geography and, geography and/or climate:
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)