The Bear Creek 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
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Partly cloudy
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Chance of showers
72° on Nov. 11, 1964, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1944. Next is 70° in 1971.
Bear Creek’s center stands about 1,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 740 ft to 1,170 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Maple Hill, about 1,510 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
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 13 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 11 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 Creek reaches the Gulf of America by way of Marble Creek, Bear Creek, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,680 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bear Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bear Creek has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 34 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bear Creek normally reaches 46° and falls to 28°. The record high is 70°, in 2025; the record low −5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 2.01 in, fell in 1956.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1944 at Lone Rock Tri County Airport, 7 miles south-southwest, 360 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
