The Sterling Heights 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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4° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 10° in 1908.
Sterling Heights’s center stands about 620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 600 ft to 660 ft, a difference of 60 ft: nearly flat ground. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Mountain, about 1,140 ft, 14 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Berea Sandstone, from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 45×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million 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 Sterling Heights reaches Lake St. Clair by way of the Moore Drain, Plum Brook and the Clinton: about 20 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 Sterling Heights; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sterling Heights has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 32 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Sterling Heights normally reaches 48° and falls to 33°. The record high is 70°, in 1909; the record low 11°, in 1933. The most rain on this date, 0.94 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Mt. Clemens Ang Base, 11 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
