The St. James 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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8° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1905. Next is 9° in 2019.
St. James’s center stands about 660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 570 ft to 710 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bois Blanc Formation (limestone), from the Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million 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 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.
Limestone. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million 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.
St. James has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 76° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in February. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 St. James normally reaches 44° and falls to 32°. The record high is 61°, in 1909; the record low 16°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.87 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 at Beaver Island, 4 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
