The Alberton 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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71° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1958. Next is 67° in 2021.
Alberton’s center stands about 3,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,950 ft to 5,680 ft, a difference of 2,730 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ch-paa-qn Peak, about 7,920 ft, 12 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Missoula Group: McNamara, Bonner, and Mount Shields Formations; locally includes lower Libby Formation in northwestern Montana (metasiltstone, argillite, quartzite), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 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 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.
Metasiltstone, argillite, quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Quartzite, argillite, metasiltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale, sandstone. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 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 Alberton reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Clark Fork, the Pend Oreille and the Columbia: about 1,030 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pend Oreille, Lake Umatilla and Noxon Rapids Reservoir.
460 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alberton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alberton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 49 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Alberton normally reaches 41° and falls to 24°. The record high is 67°, in 1999; the record low −3°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.58 in, fell in 2005.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1958 at Alberton, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
