The Rockford Bay 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. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 61° in 1995.
Rockford Bay’s center stands about 2,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,120 ft to 2,990 ft, a difference of 870 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mica Peak, about 5,220 ft, 9 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Columbia River Basalt Group (basalt, basaltic-andesite), from the Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 6 to 18 million 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 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.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 6 to 18 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.9 to 1.9 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Argillite, siltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,600 million years old. About 1.0 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.9 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 Rockford Bay reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Harrison Slough, the Spokane and the Columbia: about 760 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 Rockford Bay; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rockford Bay 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 Rockford Bay 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, 13 miles north-northeast, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
