The Belknap 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
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
74° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1956. Next is 62° in 1976.
Belknap’s center stands about 2,410 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,330 ft to 5,150 ft, a difference of 2,820 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Headley, about 7,380 ft, 9 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gravel, from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. 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. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Quartzite, argillite, metasiltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Quartzite, metasiltstone, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, argillite, quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Belknap reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Mosquito Creek, the Clark Fork, the Pend Oreille and the Columbia: about 920 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 Belknap; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Belknap has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 15 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 22 inches of water.
On November 14 Belknap normally reaches 42° and falls to 30°. The record high is 60°, in 1999; the record low 5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.49 in, fell in 2021.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1956 at Thompson Falls Ph, 5 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
