The Wawina 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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−9° on Nov. 15, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is −7° in 1986.
Wawina’s center stands about 1,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,250 ft to 1,310 ft, a difference of 60 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Slate and graywacke (slate, graywacke), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old.
The section below crosses 2 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.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, lignite, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 94 to 100 million years old. About 3 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.
Wawina straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the west side runs to the Gulf of America; most of the rest goes to Lake Superior.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches Lake Superior by way of the West Branch Floodwood, the Floodwood and the Saint Louis: about 85 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. One that lands on the west side reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bruce Creek, the Swan River and the Mississippi: about 2,130 river miles.
60 miles of the trip are on the Saint Louis.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wawina; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wawina has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. A normal year brings about 56 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 28 inches of water.
On November 14 Wawina normally reaches 37° and falls to 20°. The record high is 67°, in 1999; the record low −2°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.18 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Floodwood 2 E, 15 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
