The Seeley 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
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64° on Nov. 11, 1990, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1936. Next is 63° in 2025.
Seeley Lake’s center stands about 4,020 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,970 ft to 5,130 ft, a difference of 1,160 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Fisher Peak, about 8,740 ft, 13 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (gravel, sand, silt), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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 11 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite, metasiltstone, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 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 Seeley Lake reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Morrell Creek, the Clearwater, the Blackfoot, the Clark Fork, the Pend Oreille and the Columbia: about 1,130 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 Seeley Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Seeley Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 119 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 22 inches of water.
On November 14 Seeley Lake normally reaches 40° and falls to 22°. The record high is 62°, in 2016; the record low −8°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.49 in, fell in 1941.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1936 at Seeley Lake Ranger Station, 3 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
