The Fairbanks 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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64° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 59° in 1990.
Fairbanks’s center stands about 1,660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,570 ft to 1,740 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Weber, about 1,970 ft, 15 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Anorthositic intrusions and inclusions, undifferentiated (anorthosite), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 50×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Anorthosite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Felsic-hypabyssal, monzodiorite, gabbro. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 0.3 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 Fairbanks reaches Lake Superior by way of Hornby Creek, the West Branch Cloquet, the Cloquet and the Saint Louis: about 110 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Island Lake Reservoir.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fairbanks; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fairbanks has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 76° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. A normal year brings about 70 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 29 inches of water.
On November 14 Fairbanks normally reaches 35° and falls to 19°. The record high is 64°, in 1999; the record low −10°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.47 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Brimson 2 S, 9 miles south-southeast, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
