The Grand Rapids 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 sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
71° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 70° in 2001.
Grand Rapids’s center stands about 1,060 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,010 ft to 1,080 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mosquito Bluff, about 1,250 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.9 billion years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 0.5 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 Grand Rapids reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,810 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Petenwell Lake and Lake Wisconsin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Grand Rapids; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Grand Rapids has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. About 31 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Wisconsin Rapids Alexander Field, 4 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
