The Charlton 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 cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
−10° on Nov. 15, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1913. Next is −10° in 1959.
Charlton’s center stands about 1,370 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,270 ft to 1,450 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 32×. 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 24 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 Charlton reaches Lake Huron by way of West Branch Big Creek, the North Branch Au Sable and the Au Sable: about 120 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
95 miles of the trip are on the Au Sable.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Charlton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Charlton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in February. A normal year brings about 84 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Charlton normally reaches 43° and falls to 26°. The record high is 63°, in 1999; the record low 7°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.68 in, fell in 1992.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1913 at Vanderbilt 11 ENE, 13 miles north, 460 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
