The Fort Bidwell 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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0° on Nov. 12, 1985, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1867. Next is 4° in 1916.
Fort Bidwell’s center stands about 4,630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,450 ft to 7,160 ft, a difference of 2,710 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Crane Mountain, about 8,420 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
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 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Age: Early Miocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 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 Fort Bidwell reaches Upper Lake by way of Bidwell Creek: about 2 river miles. Upper Lake has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fort Bidwell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fort Bidwell has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 56 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Fort Bidwell normally reaches 49° and falls to 29°. The record high is 66°, in 1974; the record low 3°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 1.10 in, fell in 1869.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1867 at Fort Bidwell, here, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
