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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
75° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1961. Next is 72° in 2001.
Madison’s center stands about 1,670 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,600 ft to 1,760 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pierre Shale (shale, bentonite), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 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.
Shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Chalk, marlstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 4 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 Skunk Creek, the Big Sioux, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,130 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 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 37 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 26 inches of water.
On November 14 Madison normally reaches 43° and falls to 23°. The record high is 75°, in 1999; the record low −6°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.12 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1961 at Madison 2 SE, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
