The Otsego Lake 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.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
−4° on Nov. 15, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1891. Next is −3° in 1943.
Otsego Lake’s center stands about 1,310 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,260 ft to 1,490 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Redner Hill, about 1,470 ft, 6 miles east-southeast.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 51×. 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 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 Otsego Lake reaches Lake Huron by way of Chub Creek, the North Branch Au Sable and the Au Sable: about 130 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
95 miles of the trip are on the Au Sable.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Otsego Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Otsego Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in February. A normal year brings about 88 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Otsego Lake normally reaches 43° and falls to 27°. The record high is 65°, in 1953; the record low 3°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.76 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 at Grayling, 19 miles south, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
