The Lake Leelanau 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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70° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1959. Next is 67° in 1971.
Lake Leelanau’s center stands about 630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 580 ft to 990 ft, a difference of 410 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Fouch Hill, about 1,070 ft, 11 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Traverse Group (limestone), from the Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 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 37×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 8 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 Lake Leelanau reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Leland: about 4 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 Lake Leelanau; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lake Leelanau has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 143 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Lake Leelanau normally reaches 45° and falls to 31°. The record high is 62°, in 2009; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.88 in, fell in 1969.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1959 at Maple City 1 E, 10 miles southwest, 170 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
