The Rathdrum 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.
Rathdrum’s center stands about 2,210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,160 ft to 4,510 ft, a difference of 2,350 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Spokane, about 5,870 ft, 13 miles northwest.
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 8 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.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 20,000 years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Precambrian to Eocene. About 3 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, quartz-monzodiorite, granite. Age: Early Eocene to Middle Eocene, 43 to 49 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Argillite, siltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,600 million years old. About 2 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.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units 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 Rathdrum reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Spokane and the Columbia: about 730 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 Rathdrum; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rathdrum 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 Rathdrum 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, 10 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
