The Missoula 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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73° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 65° in 2009.
Missoula’s center stands about 3,210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,140 ft to 5,020 ft, a difference of 1,880 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Murphy Peak, about 8,080 ft, 13 miles north.
The section below crosses 10 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.
Quartzite, metasiltstone, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 20 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, argillite, quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite, argillite, metasiltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 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. 4 smaller units 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 Missoula reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Clark Fork, the Pend Oreille and the Columbia: about 1,070 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 Missoula; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Missoula has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 14 inches of water.
On November 14 Missoula normally reaches 40° and falls to 25°. The record high is 61°, in 2021; the record low −11°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.34 in, fell in 1927.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Missoula Area threaded record (Missoula International Airport, 6 miles northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
