The Little Bitterroot Lake 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 1899. Next is 64° in 1990.
Little Bitterroot Lake’s center stands about 3,900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,760 ft to 5,550 ft, a difference of 1,790 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Murr Peak, about 6,750 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
The section below crosses 3 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.
Quartzite, argillite, metasiltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, argillite, quartzite. 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 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.
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 Little Bitterroot Lake reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Little Bitterroot Lake, the Little Bitterroot, the Flathead, the Clark Fork, the Pend Oreille and the Columbia: about 1,080 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pend Oreille, Lake Umatilla, Noxon Rapids Reservoir and Little Bitterroot Lake.
460 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Little Bitterroot Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Little Bitterroot Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 54 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 17 inches of water.
On November 14 Little Bitterroot Lake normally reaches 40° and falls to 24°. The record high is 63°, in 1999; the record low −3°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 1.40 in, fell in 1903.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 from the Kalispell Area threaded record (Kalispell Glacier Airport, 24 miles east-northeast, 940 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
