The Coldwater 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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2° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 2° in 1959.
Coldwater’s center stands about 1,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 950 ft to 1,210 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Saginaw Formation (sandstone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 45×. 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: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 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 Coldwater reaches Lake Huron by way of Walker Creek, the Coldwater, the Chippewa, the Tittabawassee and the Saginaw: about 130 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
65 miles of the trip are on the Chippewa.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Coldwater; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Coldwater has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Coldwater normally reaches 46° and falls to 31°. The record high is 70°, in 1909; the record low 13°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.18 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Central Michigan University, 18 miles southeast, 300 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
