The Bay 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1891. Next is 69° in 2012.
Bay’s center stands about 830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 570 ft to 980 ft, a difference of 410 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Emmet Heights, about 1,340 ft, 13 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Traverse Group (limestone), from the Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 35×. 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 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 Bay reaches Lake Michigan by way of Walloon Lake and the Bear River: about 16 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Walloon Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bay; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bay has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in February. A normal year brings about 124 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Bay normally reaches 44° and falls to 32°. The record high is 63°, in 1999; the record low 13°, in 1933. The most rain on this date, 0.84 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 at Petoskey, 6 miles northeast, 230 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
