The Van Buren 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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6° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1891. Next is 6° in 2019.
Van Buren’s center stands about 680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 750 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Antrim Shale (black-shale), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 57×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Black-shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Van Buren reaches Lake Erie by way of the Huron: about 30 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 Van Buren; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Van Buren has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. About 30 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Van Buren normally reaches 51° and falls to 34°. The record high is 71°, in 1909; the record low 11°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 0.81 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 at Detroit Willow Run Airport, 2 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
