The Morse 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; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Showers likely
−8° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −7° in 1956.
Morse’s center stands about 1,550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,280 ft to 1,730 ft, a difference of 450 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Whittlesey, about 1,890 ft, 6 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Puritan Quartz Monzonite (granodiorite, granite), from the Mesoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.6 to 2.9 billion years old.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 21×. 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, amphibolite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Arkose, siltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Mesoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.6 to 2.9 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Paleoarchean, 3.2 to 3.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.1 to 1.1 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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. 5 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Morse reaches Lake Superior by way of Hardscrabble Creek and the Bad River: about 55 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 Morse; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Morse has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. About 28 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Morse normally reaches 41° and falls to 25°. The record high is 64°, in 1990; the record low −2°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.88 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Ashland Area threaded record (Ashland Kennedy Memorial Airport, 20 miles north-northwest, 730 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
