The Backus 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
−11° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1913. Next is 0° in 1940.
Backus’s center stands about 1,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,160 ft to 1,330 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Preachers Hill, about 1,440 ft, 12 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Saginaw Formation (sandstone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 37×. 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, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.8 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 Backus reaches Lake Michigan by way of North Branch Denton Creek, Denton Creek and the Muskegon: about 220 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lakes on the way: Houghton Lake and Muskegon Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Backus; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Backus has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 66 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 30 inches of water.
On November 14 Backus normally reaches 44° and falls to 28°. The record high is 63°, in 1953; the record low 0°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.79 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1913 from the Houghton Lake Area threaded record (Houghton Lake Roscommon County Airport, 9 miles northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
