The Colfax 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
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
5° on Nov. 15, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 6° in 1959.
Colfax’s center stands about 860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 820 ft to 960 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Skidder Hill, about 1,030 ft, 13 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Marshall Sandstone, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 52×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 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 Colfax reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Big South Branch Pere Marquette and the Pere Marquette: about 65 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 Colfax; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Colfax has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 78 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Colfax normally reaches 46° and falls to 31°. The record high is 65°, in 1895; the record low 10°, in 1933. The most rain on this date, 1.15 in, fell in 1991.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Hart 3 WSW, 18 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
