The Detroit 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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4.06 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1962. The next wettest, 3.04 inches, fell in 2014.
Detroit’s center stands about 440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 330 ft to 560 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvial, coastal and low terrace deposits (sand), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 47×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, clay. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 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.
A raindrop that lands in Detroit reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Reedy Branch, Sipsey Creek, the Buttahatchee, the Tombigbee and the Mobile: about 410 river miles.
310 miles of the trip are on the Tombigbee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Detroit; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Detroit has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. About 62 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Detroit normally reaches 64° and falls to 36°. The record high is 82°, in 1985; the record low 13°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.04 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1962 at Hamilton, 13 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
