The Waite 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. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 69° in 2006.
Waite’s center stands about 230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 220 ft to 400 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Musquash Mountain, about 1,230 ft, 10 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Devonian - Ordovician Flume Ridge Formation (graywacke), from the Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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.
Graywacke. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 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 Waite reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Tomah Stream and the Saint Croix: about 50 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Waite; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Waite has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 74 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Waite normally reaches 45° and falls to 29°. The record high is 67°, in 2010; the record low 7°, in 1990. The most rain on this date, 1.60 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Grand Lake Stream, 14 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
