The Roscommon 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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−11° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1913. Next is 0° in 1940.
Roscommon’s center stands about 1,120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,100 ft to 1,200 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Emery Hill, about 1,390 ft, 4 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Saginaw Formation (sandstone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 63×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.7 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 Roscommon reaches Lake Michigan by way of Wolf Creek and the Muskegon: about 180 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Muskegon Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Roscommon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Roscommon has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 66 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 30 inches of water.
On November 14 Roscommon normally reaches 44° and falls to 28°. The record high is 63°, in 1953; the record low 0°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.79 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1913 from the Houghton Lake Area threaded record (Houghton Lake Roscommon County Airport, 10 miles north-northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
