The Biron 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.
71° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 70° in 2001.
Biron’s center stands about 1,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,000 ft to 1,120 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rock Hill, about 1,200 ft, 8 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Prairie du Chien Group (dolostone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.9 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, metavolcanic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.9 to 1.9 billion years old. About 2 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 Biron reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,820 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Petenwell Lake and Lake Wisconsin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Biron; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Biron has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. About 31 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Wisconsin Rapids Alexander Field, 5 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.