The Chilton 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.
72° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 71° in 1953.
Chilton’s center stands about 900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 810 ft to 1,020 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian, undivided (dolostone), from the Silurian, 422 to 445 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 50×. 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: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million 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 Chilton reaches Lake Michigan by way of the South Branch Manitowoc and the Manitowoc: about 50 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Chilton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Chilton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Chilton normally reaches 45° and falls to 29°. The record high is 67°, in 1958; the record low 11°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.88 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Chilton, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.