The Elkhart 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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73° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1914. Next is 72° in 1952.
Elkhart’s center stands about 750 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 830 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
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 20 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 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 Elkhart reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Saint Joseph: about 75 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Elkhart; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elkhart has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 45 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Elkhart normally reaches 49° and falls to 33°. The record high is 69°, in 1956; the record low 10°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.13 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1914 at Goshen 3 SW, 10 miles south-southeast, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
