The Wakarusa 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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73° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1914. Next is 72° in 1952.
Wakarusa’s center stands about 840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 900 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buzzard Hill, about 1,050 ft, 12 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ellsworth Shale, from the Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old.
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 to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 24 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 Wakarusa reaches Lake Michigan by way of Baugo Creek and the Saint Joseph: about 85 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
65 miles of the trip are on the Saint Joseph.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wakarusa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wakarusa has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 45 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Wakarusa normally reaches 49° and falls to 33°. The record high is 69°, in 1956; the record low 10°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.13 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1914 at Goshen 3 SW, 7 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
