The Champion 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
66° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1961. Next is 65° in 2001.
Champion’s center stands about 1,610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,380 ft to 1,810 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Baraga Group; Michigamme Formation, undivided (mixed-clastic, metagraywacke), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 17×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic, metagraywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, schist. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite, slate, banded-iron-formation. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.4 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 Champion reaches Lake Superior by way of the Dead River Storage Basin: about 30 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: Dead River Storage Basin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Champion; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Champion has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 76° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. A normal year brings about 197 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Champion normally reaches 38° and falls to 25°. The record high is 59°, in 2001; the record low 5°, in 1995. The most rain on this date, 0.51 in, fell in 2020.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1961 from the Marquette County Area threaded record (Marquette Wfo, 16 miles east-southeast, 200 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
