The Marlette 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1959. Next is 75° in 2022.
Marlette’s center stands about 840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 790 ft to 900 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Marshall Sandstone, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 11 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 Marlette reaches Lake Huron by way of Duff Creek, the South Branch Cass, the Cass and the Saginaw: about 120 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
60 miles of the trip are on the Cass.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Marlette; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Marlette has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 42 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Marlette normally reaches 46° and falls to 29°. The record high is 68°, in 2009; the record low 8°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.26 in, fell in 2002.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1959 at Cass City 1 SSW, 19 miles north-northwest, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
