The Fairwater 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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69° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 68° in 2023.
Fairwater’s center stands about 950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 1,060 ft, a difference of 180 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 3 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 18 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 3 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 Fairwater reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Grand River and the Fox River: about 170 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lakes on the way: Lake Winnebago 6124, Lake Butte des Morts and Puckaway Lake.
50 miles of the trip are on the Fox River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fairwater; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fairwater has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. About 28 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fairwater normally reaches 45° and falls to 29°. The record high is 64°, in 2025; the record low 10°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.10 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Fond Du Lac County Airport, 19 miles east, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
