The Castleton 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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8° on Nov. 16, 1997, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 8° in 2019.
Castleton’s center stands about 870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 980 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Michigan Formation (shale), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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 17 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.8 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 Castleton reaches Lake Michigan by way of Mud Creek, the Thornapple and the Grand River: about 120 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
60 miles of the trip are on the Grand River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Castleton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Castleton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 32 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Castleton normally reaches 48° and falls to 33°. The record high is 68°, in 1902; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.45 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 from the Battle Creek Area threaded record (Battle Creek Kellogg Airport, 24 miles south-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
