The Blue Lake 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
6° on Nov. 15, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 13° in 1986.
Blue Lake’s center stands about 700 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 770 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Marshall Sandstone, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 58×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 17 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 Blue Lake reaches Lake Michigan by way of Cleveland Creek and the White River: about 18 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: White Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Blue Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Blue Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 69 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Blue Lake normally reaches 46° and falls to 33°. The record high is 68°, in 1956; the record low 14°, in 1908. The most rain on this date, 1.40 in, fell in 1908.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Montague 4 NW, 11 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
