The Allen 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1891. Next is 70° in 1928.
Allen’s center stands about 1,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,020 ft to 1,170 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
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: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 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.
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 Allen reaches Lake Michigan by way of Little Hog Creek, South Branch Hog Creek, Hog Creek, the Coldwater and the Saint Joseph: about 180 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
150 miles of the trip are on the Saint Joseph.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Allen; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Allen has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Allen normally reaches 48° and falls to 30°. The record high is 69°, in 1989; the record low 8°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.33 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 at Hillsdale, 7 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
