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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
82° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 81° in 2025.
Madison’s center stands about 1,590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,560 ft to 1,720 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ogallala Group or Formation (siltstone-mudstone, conglomerate-sandstone), from the Miocene, 5.3 to 23 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 56×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone, conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 Madison reaches the Gulf of America by way of Union Creek, the Elkhorn, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,930 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
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 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 30 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 27 inches of water.
On November 14 Madison normally reaches 49° and falls to 26°. The record high is 81°, in 2025; the record low −12°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.16 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Norfolk Area threaded record (Norfolk Karl Stefan Memorial Airport, 11 miles north). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
