The Madison 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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5° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1887. Next is 6° in 1933.
Madison’s center stands about 780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 760 ft to 830 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Irish Hill, about 1,140 ft, 15 miles northwest.
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 50×. 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: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 23 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.6 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 Madison reaches Lake Erie by way of the South Branch River Raisin and the River Raisin: about 90 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 Madison; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Madison has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 26 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Madison normally reaches 50° and falls to 31°. The record high is 72°, in 1909; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.40 in, fell in 1911.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 at Adrian 2 NNE, 5 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
