The Watertown 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. 13, 1879, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1863. Next is 71° in 1909.
Watertown’s center stands about 820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 790 ft to 900 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Grand River Formation (sandstone), 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 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 4 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 Watertown reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Looking Glass and the Grand River: about 130 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
110 miles of the trip are on the Grand River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Watertown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Watertown has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 50 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Watertown normally reaches 48° and falls to 32°. The record high is 69°, in 1909; the record low 4°, in 1873. The most rain on this date, 1.01 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1863 from the Lansing Area threaded record (Lansing Capital City Airport, 4 miles southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
