The 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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6.59 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1903. The next wettest, 4.28 inches, fell in 1910.
Glacier’s center stands about 930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 780 ft to 4,380 ft, a difference of 3,600 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Baker, about 10,730 ft, 10 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (silt, sand), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. 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. Age: Early Pliocene to Holocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Argillite, graywacke. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Late Cretaceous to Eocene, 34 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Triassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 252 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 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 Glacier reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the North Fork Nooksack and the Nooksack: about 60 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Glacier; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Glacier has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in August; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. A normal year brings about 11 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Glacier normally reaches 49° and falls to 36°. The record high is 64°, in 1953; the record low 9°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 3.42 in, fell in 2021.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Clearbrook, 18 miles west-northwest, 870 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
