The Benton 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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78° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1891. Next is 71° in 1915.
Benton’s center stands about 750 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 760 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Mountain, about 960 ft, 9 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Detroit River Group (dolostone), 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 50×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 1 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 Benton reaches Lake Huron by way of Myers Creek, the Black River and the Cheboygan: about 7 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 Benton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Benton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in February. A normal year brings about 88 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Benton normally reaches 44° and falls to 30°. The record high is 64°, in 1999; the record low 11°, in 1933. The most rain on this date, 0.69 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 at Cheboygan, 6 miles west-northwest, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
