The Schoolcraft 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.
70° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1887. Next is 70° in 2023.
Schoolcraft’s center stands about 680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 590 ft to 850 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Horace Greeley, about 1,530 ft, 13 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Jacobsville Sandstone, from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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 28×. 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: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.1 to 1.1 billion years old. About 5 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.
Rain that falls on Schoolcraft runs straight into Lake Superior. 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 Schoolcraft; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Schoolcraft has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in February. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Schoolcraft normally reaches 38° and falls to 27°. The record high is 59°, in 1909; the record low 6°, in 1933. The most rain on this date, 0.95 in, fell in 1944.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 at Hancock Houghton County Airport, 9 miles west-southwest, 380 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.