The Pioneer 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
73° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 67° in 1953.
Pioneer’s center stands about 1,370 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,090 ft to 1,520 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Michigan Formation (shale), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
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 37×. 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 17 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 7 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 Pioneer reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Manistee: about 120 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 Pioneer; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pioneer 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 74 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Pioneer normally reaches 44° and falls to 27°. The record high is 65°, in 1953; the record low 1°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.77 in, fell in 1980.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Lake City Experiment Farm, 11 miles south-southwest, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
