The West Glacier 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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65° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 63° in 1948.
West Glacier’s center stands about 3,220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,150 ft to 6,110 ft, a difference of 2,960 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Jackson, about 9,910 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
The section below crosses 8 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 8 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, argillite, quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Miocene, 20 to 48 million 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. 2 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 West Glacier reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Middle Fork Flathead, the Flathead, the Clark Fork, the Pend Oreille and the Columbia: about 1,120 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Flathead Lake, 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 West Glacier; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Glacier has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 115 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 31 inches of water.
On November 14 West Glacier normally reaches 37° and falls to 27°. The record high is 60°, in 1999; the record low −6°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.69 in, fell in 2021.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at W Glacier, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
