The Laurium 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, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1887. Next is 70° in 2023.
Laurium’s center stands about 1,210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 1,260 ft, a difference of 640 ft: hilly country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Portage Lake Volcanics (basalt), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1.1 to 1.1 billion 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 28×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.1 to 1.1 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Basaltic-andesite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale, sandstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, arkose. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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 Laurium reaches Lake Superior by way of the Trap Rock and the Portage: about 25 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 Laurium; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Laurium has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in February. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Laurium normally reaches 38° and falls to 27°. The record high is 59°, in 1909; the record low 6°, in 1933. The most rain on this date, 0.95 in, fell in 1944.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 at Hancock Houghton County Airport, 5 miles south-southwest, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
