The Bear Bluff 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.
73° on Nov. 12, 1964, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is 72° in 1953.
Bear Bluff’s center stands about 970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 960 ft to 1,050 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Saddle Mound, about 1,360 ft, 12 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cambrian, undivided (sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
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.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 24 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 Bear Bluff reaches the Gulf of America by way of Beaver Creek, Dandy Creek, the Lemonweir, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,830 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Wisconsin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bear Bluff; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bear Bluff has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Bear Bluff normally reaches 43° and falls to 25°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low 0°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.55 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Mather 3 NW, 3 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.