The Caledonia 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
73° on Nov. 16, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1889. Next is 72° in 1964.
Caledonia’s center stands about 1,360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 790 ft to 1,470 ft, a difference of 680 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sauk Point, about 1,630 ft, 6 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Barron Quartzite, from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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 25×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 9 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 Caledonia reaches the Gulf of America by way of Rowley Creek, the Baraboo, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,740 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Wisconsin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Caledonia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Caledonia has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 39 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Caledonia normally reaches 45° and falls to 29°. The record high is 72°, in 1999; the record low 1°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.63 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1889 at Portage Wwtp, 7 miles northeast, 580 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
