The Fernwood 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 1897. Next is 63° in 1937.
Fernwood’s center stands about 2,780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,700 ft to 4,220 ft, a difference of 1,520 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Grandfather Mountain, about 6,270 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sedimentary rocks associated with flood basalts (mixed-clastic), from the Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 17 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metasiltstone, quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 17 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss, schist, amphibolite. Age: Neoarchean to Paleoproterozoic, 2.5 to 2.7 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1.0 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 6 to 18 million years old. About 0.4 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 Fernwood reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Finn Creek, the Saint Maries, the Saint Joe, the Spokane and the Columbia: about 820 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Harrison Slough, Lake Umatilla and Chatcolet Lake.
360 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fernwood; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fernwood has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 56 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 31 inches of water.
On November 14 Fernwood normally reaches 44° and falls to 30°. The record high is 62°, in 1899; the record low 4°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 1.50 in, fell in 1897.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Saint Maries, 17 miles north-northwest, 630 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
