The Benton 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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2° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 12° in 1997.
Benton’s center stands about 830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 810 ft to 910 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Diamond Hill, about 1,090 ft, 13 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ellsworth Shale, from the Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 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.
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 Benton reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Saint Joseph: about 100 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
75 miles of the trip are on the Saint Joseph.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Benton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Benton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. About 35 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Goshen Municipal Airport, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
