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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
6° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1991. Next is 15° in 2005.
Detroit’s center stands about 640 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 460 ft to 700 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Meppen Limestone, Fern Glen Formation, and Burlington-Keokuk Limestone, from the Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 45×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Early Mississippian, 347 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 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.
A raindrop that lands in Detroit reaches the Gulf of America by way of Blue Creek, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,250 river miles.
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 hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1991 at Pittsfield No 2, 7 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
