The Germantown 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
−6° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1905. Next is 0° in 1986.
Germantown’s center stands about 880 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 870 ft to 940 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Johnson Hill, about 1,430 ft, 13 miles southwest.
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 47×. 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 Germantown reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,770 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Wisconsin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Germantown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Germantown has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 47 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Germantown normally reaches 45° and falls to 28°. The record high is 74°, in 1999; the record low 4°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.65 in, fell in 1931.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 at Mauston 1 SE, 9 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
