The Big 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
68° on Nov. 11, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1945. Next is 67° in 2023.
Big Bay’s center stands about 690 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 590 ft to 1,250 ft, a difference of 660 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Benison, about 1,600 ft, 11 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Jacobsville Sandstone, from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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 16×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 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.
Rain that falls on Big Bay runs straight into Lake Superior. 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 Big Bay; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Big Bay has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 132 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Big Bay normally reaches 41° and falls to 28°. The record high is 63°, in 2016; the record low 4°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.48 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1945 at Big Bay 1 NW, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
