The Swede Heaven 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.
6.36 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1911. The next wettest, 5.56 inches, fell in 2001.
Swede Heaven’s center stands about 420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 350 ft to 4,490 ft, a difference of 4,140 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Three Fingers, about 6,670 ft, 8 miles south-southeast.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Greenstone. Age: Late Triassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 237 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Early Paleocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 66 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Late Cretaceous to Eocene, 34 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Swede Heaven reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the North Fork Stillaguamish, the Stillaguamish and the West Pass: about 55 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Swede Heaven; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Swede Heaven has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in August; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 83 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Swede Heaven normally reaches 46° and falls to 35°. The record high is 67°, in 1934; the record low −3°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 2.90 in, fell in 1991.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Darrington Ranger Station, 6 miles east-southeast, 130 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.