The Washington 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1887. Next is 70° in 1909.
Washington’s center stands about 660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 650 ft to 710 ft, a difference of 60 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Saginaw Formation (sandstone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million 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 Washington reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Maple and the Grand River: about 120 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
95 miles of the trip are on the Grand River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Washington; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Washington has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 39 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Washington normally reaches 46° and falls to 30°. The record high is 67°, in 1989; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 1927.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 at Alma, 17 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
