The Ross 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
74° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1929. Next is 71° in 2010.
Ross’s center stands about 860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 810 ft to 990 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
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 64×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 10 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 Ross reaches Lake Michigan by way of Augusta Creek and the Kalamazoo: about 90 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 Ross; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ross has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ross normally reaches 49° and falls to 34°. The record high is 69°, in 2010; the record low 13°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.05 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1929 at Gull Lake Biological Station, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
