The Mullan 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.
Mostly cloudy
Showers likely
Showers likely
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5° on Nov. 14, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1975. Next is 7° in 2011.
Mullan’s center stands about 3,300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,200 ft to 6,260 ft, a difference of 3,060 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stevens Peak, about 6,810 ft, 3 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ravalli Group (quartzite), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old.
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.
Quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, 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 6 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Syenite, monzonite, quartz-monzonite. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 88 to 115 million years old. About 0.7 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 Mullan reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Boulder Creek, the South Fork Coeur d'Alene, the Coeur d'Alene, the Spokane and the Columbia: about 830 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Harrison Slough and 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 Mullan; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mullan has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in February. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Mullan normally reaches 41° and falls to 28°. The record high is 57°, in 2021; the record low 5°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.80 in, fell in 1990.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1975 at Mullan, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
