The Springfield 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
74° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is 68° in 2020.
Springfield’s center stands about 1,120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 990 ft to 1,260 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Allen Hill, about 1,410 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Marshall Sandstone, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 30×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 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 Springfield reaches Lake Michigan by way of Spring Creek and 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 Springfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Springfield has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in February. A normal year brings about 132 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Springfield normally reaches 43° and falls to 28°. The record high is 64°, in 1999; the record low 13°, in 1995. The most rain on this date, 0.58 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Kalkaska, 13 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
