The Hiawatha 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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64° on Nov. 15, 2001, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 62° in 1958.
Hiawatha’s center stands about 750 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 660 ft to 800 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Queenston Shale, from the Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 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: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 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 Hiawatha reaches Lake Michigan by way of Hay Meadow Creek, Stutts Creek, the West Branch Manistique and the Manistique: about 45 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 Hiawatha; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hiawatha has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 73° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 33 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Hiawatha normally reaches 41° and falls to 29°. The record high is 62°, in 1958; the record low 4°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.98 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Manistique Wwtp, 11 miles south, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
