The Dover 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
−10° on Nov. 15, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1913. Next is −10° in 1959.
Dover’s center stands about 1,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,010 ft to 1,410 ft, a difference of 400 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Watson Hills, about 1,500 ft, 9 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bedford Shale, from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 34×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 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 Dover reaches Lake Huron by way of the Pigeon and the Cheboygan: about 60 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: Mullett Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Dover; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Dover has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in February. A normal year brings about 84 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Dover normally reaches 43° and falls to 26°. The record high is 63°, in 1999; the record low 7°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.68 in, fell in 1992.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1913 at Vanderbilt 11 ENE, 9 miles northeast, 280 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
