The Gaines 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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1° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1921. Next is 7° in 1933.
Gaines’s center stands about 860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 790 ft to 900 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
The section below crosses 5 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.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 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 Gaines reaches Lake Huron by way of the Atherton Drain, Jones Creek, Webb Creek, the Shiawassee and the Saginaw: about 95 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
60 miles of the trip are on the Shiawassee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gaines; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gaines has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Gaines normally reaches 47° and falls to 31°. The record high is 66°, in 2009; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.87 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1921 from the Flint Area threaded record (Flint Fcwos, 10 miles northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
