The Michiana 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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2° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 6° in 2019.
Michiana’s center stands about 660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 570 ft to 730 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Antrim Shale (black-shale), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 50×. 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: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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.
Rain that falls on Michiana runs straight into Lake Michigan. 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 Michiana; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Michiana has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 65 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Michiana normally reaches 48° and falls to 33°. The record high is 72°, in 1958; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.62 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Laporte, 11 miles south-southeast, 150 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
