The South Bend 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.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
4° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 6° in 2019.
South Bend’s center stands about 700 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 670 ft to 840 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Reeves Hill, about 900 ft, 9 miles southwest.
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: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 5 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.
South Bend straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the southwest side runs to the Gulf of America; most of the rest goes to Lake Michigan.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Saint Joseph: about 55 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. One that lands on the southwest side reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Kankakee, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,600 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of South Bend; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
South Bend has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 64 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 South Bend normally reaches 48° and falls to 32°. The record high is 71°, in 1971; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.50 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the South Bend Area threaded record (South Bend Airport, 4 miles west-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
