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.
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
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10° on Nov. 16, 1967, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1884. Next is 10° in 1986.
Madison’s center stands about 1,320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 820 ft to 1,520 ft, a difference of 700 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Myers Hill, about 1,560 ft, 5 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Allegheny Formation (sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 24×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.9 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 the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,010 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
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 warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Madison normally reaches 50° and falls to 29°. The record high is 69°, in 1989; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.60 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1884 at Clarion 3 SW, 13 miles north-northeast, 280 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
