The Shelby 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.
5° on Nov. 15, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 6° in 1959.
Shelby’s center stands about 820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 660 ft to 1,020 ft, a difference of 360 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Marshall Sandstone, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 39×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 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 Shelby reaches Lake Michigan by way of Robinson Creek, the North Branch White and the White River: about 40 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: White Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Shelby; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Shelby has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 78 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Shelby normally reaches 46° and falls to 31°. The record high is 65°, in 1895; the record low 10°, in 1933. The most rain on this date, 1.15 in, fell in 1991.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Hart 3 WSW, 5 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.