The Martiny 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.
74° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 69° in 2020.
Martiny’s center stands about 1,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 990 ft to 1,130 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Red beds (shale), from the Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 61×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million 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 Martiny reaches Lake Michigan by way of Gilbert Creek, the West Branch Little Muskegon, the Little Muskegon, the Muskegon and the Middle Channel Muskegon: about 100 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: Muskegon Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Martiny; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Martiny 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 Martiny 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, 11 miles west, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.