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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
73° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1947. Next is 70° in 2002.
Detroit’s center stands about 190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 170 ft to 360 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Harris, about 1,260 ft, 11 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian - Ordovician Vassalboro Formation (sandstone), from the Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 30×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Schist, slate. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Quartzite, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 434 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Atlantic Ocean by way of the Sebasticook and the Kennebec: about 90 river miles.
60 miles of the trip are on the Kennebec.
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 warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 72 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Detroit normally reaches 47° and falls to 28°. The record high is 67°, in 2022; the record low 5°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.03 in, fell in 1949.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1947 at Corinna, 9 miles north-northeast, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
