The Franklin 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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0° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1950. Next is 3° in 1986.
Franklin’s center stands about 780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 690 ft to 870 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cherneyville Hill, about 1,020 ft, 4 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian, undivided (dolostone), from the Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 53×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 21 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 Franklin reaches Lake Michigan by way of the East Twin: about 25 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 Franklin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Franklin has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 76° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 46 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Franklin normally reaches 44° and falls to 30°. The record high is 68°, in 1958; the record low 13°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.35 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1950 at Two Rivers, 17 miles south-southeast, 190 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
