The Highland 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
73° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 67° in 1953.
Highland’s center stands about 1,350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,210 ft to 1,580 ft, a difference of 370 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Saginaw Formation (sandstone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million 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 32×. 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 24 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 0.4 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 Highland reaches Lake Michigan by way of Crocker Creek, the Middle Branch and the Muskegon: about 160 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: Muskegon Lake.
130 miles of the trip are on the Muskegon.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Highland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Highland has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 74 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Highland normally reaches 44° and falls to 27°. The record high is 65°, in 1953; the record low 1°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.77 in, fell in 1980.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Lake City Experiment Farm, 12 miles north-northeast, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
