The Alpena 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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71° on Nov. 11, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1872. Next is 68° in 1953.
Alpena’s center stands about 590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 520 ft to 670 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Manning Hill, about 960 ft, 14 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Traverse Group (limestone), from the Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 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.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 7 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 Alpena reaches Lake Huron by way of the Thunder Bay: about 1 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 Alpena; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alpena has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 59 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Alpena normally reaches 44° and falls to 30°. The record high is 66°, in 1994; the record low 8°, in 1933. The most rain on this date, 0.82 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1872 at Alpena Wastewater Plant, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
