The Porterfield 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
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
74° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1919. Next is 71° in 2022.
Porterfield’s center stands about 660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 740 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sinnipee Group (dolostone), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old.
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.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million 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 Porterfield reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Peshtigo: about 20 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 Porterfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Porterfield has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Porterfield normally reaches 44° and falls to 29°. The record high is 67°, in 1958; the record low 10°, in 1933. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1919 at Marinette, 9 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
