The Thompson 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
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64° on Nov. 15, 2001, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 62° in 1958.
Thompson’s center stands about 600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 570 ft to 730 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Manistique Formation (dolostone, limestone), from the Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 2 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 Thompson reaches Lake Michigan by way of Indian Lake, the Indian and the Manistique: about 10 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: Indian Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Thompson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Thompson has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 73° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 33 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Thompson normally reaches 41° and falls to 29°. The record high is 62°, in 1958; the record low 4°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.98 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Manistique Wwtp, 5 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
