The Laird 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 sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
66° on Nov. 17, 2023, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1956. Next is 64° in 2016.
Laird’s center stands about 1,120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 1,270 ft, a difference of 390 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Adventure Mountain, about 1,480 ft, 15 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Jacobsville Sandstone, from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 23×. 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. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 24 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 Laird reaches Lake Superior by way of the West Branch Sturgeon, the Sturgeon and the Portage: about 50 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: Torch Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Laird; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Laird has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. About 33 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Laird normally reaches 40° and falls to 25°. The record high is 62°, in 1990; the record low 2°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.33 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1956 at Alberta Ford For Center, 15 miles east-southeast, 190 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
