The Calvin 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1953. Next is 73° in 1989.
Calvin’s center stands about 890 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 990 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Hill, about 1,180 ft, 8 miles northeast.
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 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 15 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 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 Calvin reaches Lake Michigan by way of Christiana Creek and the Saint Joseph: about 95 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
75 miles of the trip are on the Saint Joseph.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Calvin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Calvin has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Calvin normally reaches 48° and falls to 31°. The record high is 73°, in 1989; the record low 10°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.32 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1953 at Dowagiac 1 W, 14 miles northwest, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
