The Howell 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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Howell’s center stands about 930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 1,050 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Peach Mountain, about 1,110 ft, 14 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Berea Sandstone, from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 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: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 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 Howell reaches Lake Huron by way of the South Branch Shiawassee, the Shiawassee and the Saginaw: about 130 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
80 miles of the trip are on the Shiawassee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Howell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
