The Wardner 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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69° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1905. Next is 64° in 2021.
Wardner’s center stands about 3,220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,230 ft to 5,890 ft, a difference of 3,660 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tiger Peak, about 6,610 ft, 14 miles east.
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 6 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 14 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, quartzite, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.6 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 Wardner reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the South Fork Coeur d'Alene, the Coeur d'Alene, the Spokane and the Columbia: about 810 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 Wardner; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wardner has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Wardner normally reaches 44° and falls to 28°. The record high is 61°, in 1912; the record low 6°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.98 in, fell in 1941.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 at Kellogg, here, 920 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
