The Chester 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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−2° on Nov. 12, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1970. Next is 5° in 2019.
Chester’s center stands about 860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 850 ft to 940 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sinnipee Group (dolostone), from the Ordovician, 445 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.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 1.0 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.9 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 Chester reaches the Gulf of America by way of Plum Creek, the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,770 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Koshkonong.
1,450 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Chester; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Chester has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 41 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Chester normally reaches 44° and falls to 27°. The record high is 71°, in 1971; the record low 7°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 1980.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1970 at Horicon Wwtp, 11 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
