The Tawas 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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71° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1890. Next is 69° in 1990.
Tawas’s center stands about 740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 820 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Michigan Formation (shale), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 58×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 8 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 Tawas reaches Lake Huron by way of Dead Creek and the Tawas: about 4 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 Tawas; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tawas has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 49 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Tawas normally reaches 46° and falls to 30°. The record high is 65°, in 1994; the record low 9°, in 1908. The most rain on this date, 1.28 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1890 at East Tawas, 4 miles east, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
