The Columbus 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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68° on Nov. 15, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1931. Next is 67° in 1931.
Columbus’s center stands about 690 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 760 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sunbury Shale (black-shale), from the Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 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 64×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 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 Columbus reaches Lake St. Clair by way of Rattle Run, the Pine River and the Saint Clair: 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 Columbus; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Columbus has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Columbus normally reaches 48° and falls to 36°. The record high is 64°, in 2009; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.54 in, fell in 1959.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1931 at Port Huron, 14 miles east-northeast, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
