The West Traverse 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
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
74° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1891. Next is 69° in 2012.
West Traverse’s center stands about 850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 570 ft to 1,200 ft, a difference of 630 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Emmet Heights, about 1,340 ft, 5 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Traverse Group (limestone), from the Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 26×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Black-shale, limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 1 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.
Rain that falls on West Traverse runs straight into Lake Michigan. 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 West Traverse; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Traverse has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in February. A normal year brings about 124 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 West Traverse normally reaches 44° and falls to 32°. The record high is 63°, in 1999; the record low 13°, in 1933. The most rain on this date, 0.84 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 at Petoskey, 6 miles south-southeast, 250 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
