The Orion 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 1894. Next is 75° in 2022.
Orion’s center stands about 1,020 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 920 ft to 1,090 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Christie, about 1,280 ft, 9 miles north-northwest.
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 43×. 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 23 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 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 Orion reaches Lake St. Clair by way of the Clinton: about 70 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 Orion; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Orion 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 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Orion normally reaches 48° and falls to 32°. The record high is 69°, in 1909; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.25 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Pontiac Wwtp, 8 miles south, 130 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
