The Wilson 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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Showers likely
71° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1939. Next is 70° in 1999.
Wilson’s center stands about 1,330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 890 ft to 1,340 ft, a difference of 450 ft: hilly country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower Ordovician (dolostone, sandstone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 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 28×. 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, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 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 Wilson reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Mississippi: about 1,710 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wilson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wilson has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Wilson normally reaches 44° and falls to 30°. The record high is 70°, in 1999; the record low 3°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1939 at Winona Dam 5 A, 9 miles north, 670 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
