The Three Lakes 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.
Three Lakes’s center stands about 1,620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,610 ft to 1,870 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Curwood, about 2,010 ft, 10 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Baraga Group; Michigamme Formation; Gray to black slate, from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 52×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic, metagraywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Quartzite, slate, banded-iron-formation. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 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 Three Lakes reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Spurr, the Michigamme and the Menominee: about 190 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lakes on the way: Michigamme Reservoir and Lake Michigamme.
120 miles of the trip are on the Menominee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Three Lakes; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Three Lakes 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 Three Lakes 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, 11 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
