The Mellen 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. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1919. Next is 71° in 2022.
Mellen’s center stands about 730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 770 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Black River Limestone, from the Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million 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 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.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 0.5 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 Mellen reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Little River and the Menominee: about 30 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 Mellen; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mellen has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Mellen normally reaches 44° and falls to 29°. The record high is 67°, in 1958; the record low 10°, in 1933. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1919 at Marinette, 16 miles south, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
