The Mitchell 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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73° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1913. Next is 73° in 2022.
Mitchell’s center stands about 900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 820 ft to 1,280 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Kelly Hills, about 1,170 ft, 3 miles east-northeast.
The section below crosses 5 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.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.6 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 Mitchell reaches Lake Huron by way of Yoder Creek, Little Wolf Creek, Wolf Creek, the Lower South Branch Thunder Bay and the Thunder Bay: about 55 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 Mitchell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mitchell has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in February. About 33 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Mitchell normally reaches 45° and falls to 28°. The record high is 64°, in 1958; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.45 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1913 at Hale Loud Dam, 19 miles south-southeast, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
