The Fern Prairie 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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6.70 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1965. The next wettest, 4.90 inches, fell in 1995.
Fern Prairie’s center stands about 490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 180 ft to 1,530 ft, a difference of 1,350 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Silver Star Mountain, about 4,340 ft, 11 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pliocene nonmarine rocks (conglomerate), from the Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old.
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 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.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Late Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 38 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Silt, sand, gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Oligocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 34 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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. 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 Fern Prairie reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Lacamas Creek and the Columbia: about 120 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fern Prairie; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fern Prairie has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in August; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. A normal year brings about 6 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 83 inches of water.
On November 14 Fern Prairie normally reaches 51° and falls to 37°. The record high is 69°, in 1969; the record low 18°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 1.84 in, fell in 1966.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1965 at Skamania Fish Hatchery, 9 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
