The Churchill 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1900. Next is 71° in 2020.
Churchill’s center stands about 890 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 820 ft to 990 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wagon Wheel Hill, about 1,500 ft, 12 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Michigan Formation (shale), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 30×. 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 Churchill reaches Lake Huron by way of Hiltz Creek: about 50 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Churchill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Churchill has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 53 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Churchill normally reaches 44° and falls to 27°. The record high is 65°, in 1953; the record low 3°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.02 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1900 at West Branch 3 SE, 7 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
