The Coeur d'Alene 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.
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
68° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 61° in 1995.
Coeur d'Alene’s center stands about 2,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,120 ft to 2,820 ft, a difference of 700 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Skitwish Peak, about 5,350 ft, 14 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Missoula Flood deposits (gravel, sand, silt), from the Pleistocene, less than 20,000 years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, quartzite, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.9 to 1.9 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 6 to 18 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 20,000 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. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Coeur d'Alene reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Spokane and the Columbia: about 740 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
360 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Coeur d'Alene; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Coeur d'Alene has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. About 25 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Coeur d'Alene normally reaches 45° and falls to 32°. The record high is 63°, in 1999; the record low 0°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 1.08 in, fell in 1937.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Coeur D'Alene, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
