The Bethel 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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4° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 5° in 1933.
Bethel’s center stands about 1,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 940 ft to 1,060 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
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.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 Bethel reaches Lake Michigan by way of Swan Creek and the Saint Joseph: about 160 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
130 miles of the trip are on the Saint Joseph.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bethel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bethel has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Bethel normally reaches 47° and falls to 31°. The record high is 69°, in 1902; the record low 8°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.96 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Coldwater St School, 10 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
