The Hansen 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
Showers likely
71° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 70° in 2001.
Hansen’s center stands about 1,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,040 ft to 1,200 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cary Mound, about 1,300 ft, 10 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alkali feldspar granite of 1835 Ma age group (alkali-feldspar-granite), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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 62×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, metavolcanic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.9 to 1.9 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.9 billion years old. About 0.6 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 Hansen reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dawes Creek, Hemlock Creek, the Yellow, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,830 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Wisconsin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hansen; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hansen has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. About 31 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Wisconsin Rapids Alexander Field, 12 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
