The Lilley 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 69° in 2020.
Lilley’s center stands about 910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 820 ft to 1,050 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bayport Limestone, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 36×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 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 Lilley reaches Lake Michigan by way of Cedar Creek, the Big South Branch Pere Marquette and the Pere Marquette: about 70 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 Lilley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lilley has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in February. A normal year brings about 61 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Lilley normally reaches 45° and falls to 28°. The record high is 65°, in 1909; the record low 4°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.53 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Big Rapids Water Treatment Plant, 19 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
