The Dell Prairie 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
−3° on Nov. 14, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −3° in 1986.
Dell Prairie’s center stands about 990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 860 ft to 1,090 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Knob, about 1,250 ft, 10 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cambrian, undivided (sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 45×. 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 24 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 Dell Prairie reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,750 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Wisconsin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Dell Prairie; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Dell Prairie has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Dell Prairie normally reaches 46° and falls to 28°. The record high is 72°, in 1999; the record low −3°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.16 in, fell in 1956.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Baraboo Wwtp, 16 miles south, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
