The Northwest Stanwood 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.
Showers likely
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
70° on Nov. 13, 2013, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1945. Next is 65° in 1990.
Northwest Stanwood’s center stands about 200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 350 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cultus Mountain, about 4,000 ft, 15 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Younger glacial drift (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Late Cretaceous to Eocene, 34 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Graywacke, argillite, phyllite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Eocene, 34 to 175 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.
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.
Rain that falls on Northwest Stanwood runs straight into the Pacific Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Northwest Stanwood; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Northwest Stanwood has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 70° in August; winter nights fall to about 37° in February. A normal year brings about 5 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
On November 14 Northwest Stanwood normally reaches 54° and falls to 41°. The record high is 66°, in 2013; the record low 11°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 2015.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1945 at Whidbey Island Nas, 16 miles west-northwest, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
