The Defiance 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 1893. Next is 74° in 1902.
Defiance’s center stands about 680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 650 ft to 760 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Antrim Shale, from the Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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.
Shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Dolostone, shale, limestone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 0.9 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 Defiance reaches Lake Erie by way of the Maumee: about 65 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 Defiance; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Defiance has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Defiance normally reaches 50° and falls to 33°. The record high is 73°, in 1909; the record low 9°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1978.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Defiance, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
