The Spurr 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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69° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1968. Next is 63° in 2023.
Spurr’s center stands about 1,890 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,690 ft to 1,900 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Baraga Group; Michigamme Formation, undivided (mixed-clastic, metagraywacke), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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 51×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mixed-clastic, metagraywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Gneiss, amphibolite, migmatite. Age: Paleoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.5 to 3.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, metavolcanic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite, slate, banded-iron-formation. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 0.9 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 Spurr reaches Lake Superior by way of the Tioga, the Sturgeon and the Portage: about 100 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: Torch Lake.
85 miles of the trip are on the Sturgeon.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Spurr; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Spurr has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. A normal year brings about 208 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Spurr normally reaches 36° and falls to 24°. The record high is 61°, in 1990; the record low 0°, in 1995. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 2000.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1968 at Herman, 14 miles north-northwest, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
