The Clayton 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
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 75° in 2022.
Clayton’s center stands about 850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 710 ft to 870 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Kuhn Hill, about 1,060 ft, 13 miles northwest.
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 59×. 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.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 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 Clayton reaches Lake Huron by way of Burch Creek: about 35 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 Clayton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Clayton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. About 31 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Clayton normally reaches 45° and falls to 31°. The record high is 65°, in 1989; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.12 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Standish 4 NE, 9 miles south-southeast, 240 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
