The Alma 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
−8° on Nov. 13, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −7° in 1916.
Alma’s center stands about 970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 910 ft to 1,230 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bruce Mound, about 1,390 ft, 3 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cambrian, undivided (sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million 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 33×. 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: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 23 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 1.0 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 Alma reaches the Gulf of America by way of Halls Creek, the Black River, the Dodge Chute and the Mississippi: about 1,770 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alma; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alma has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Alma normally reaches 43° and falls to 25°. The record high is 70°, in 1999; the record low −7°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.26 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Neillsville 3 ESE, 17 miles east-northeast, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
