The Covington 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.
66° on Nov. 17, 2023, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1956. Next is 64° in 2016.
Covington’s center stands about 1,610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,290 ft to 1,750 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Baraga Group; Michigamme Formation, undivided (mixed-clastic, metagraywacke), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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 20×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mixed-clastic, metagraywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 7 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 Covington reaches Lake Superior by way of the Murphy, the Rock River, the Sturgeon and the Portage: about 85 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Torch Lake.
70 miles of the trip are on the Sturgeon.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Covington; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Covington has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. About 33 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Covington normally reaches 40° and falls to 25°. The record high is 62°, in 1990; the record low 2°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.33 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1956 at Alberta Ford For Center, 8 miles north-northeast, 300 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.