The Athens 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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8° on Nov. 16, 1997, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 8° in 2019.
Athens’s center stands about 900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 860 ft to 970 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Dixon Hill, about 1,120 ft, 10 miles east.
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 24 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 Athens reaches Lake Michigan by way of Nottawa Creek and the Saint Joseph: about 140 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 Athens; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Athens has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 32 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Athens normally reaches 48° and falls to 33°. The record high is 68°, in 1902; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.45 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 from the Battle Creek Area threaded record (Battle Creek Kellogg Airport, 16 miles north). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
