The Black Earth 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.
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71° on Nov. 14, 1971, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1869. Next is 70° in 1911.
Black Earth’s center stands about 830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 790 ft to 1,080 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blue Mounds, about 1,740 ft, 9 miles southwest.
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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 27×. 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 14 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.4 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 Black Earth reaches the Gulf of America by way of Black Earth Creek, Blue Mounds Creek, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,700 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Black Earth; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Black Earth has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Black Earth normally reaches 46° and falls to 29°. The record high is 71°, in 1971; the record low 2°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.04 in, fell in 1956.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1869 from the Madison Area threaded record (Madison Dane County Regional Airport, 20 miles east). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
