The Hiles 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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−9° on Nov. 16, 1932, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −6° in 1933.
Hiles’s center stands about 1,650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,630 ft to 1,830 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sugarbush Hill, about 1,980 ft, 13 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mafic metavolcanic rocks (basalt, basaltic-andesite), 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 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.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.9 to 1.9 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granite, tonalite, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 1.9 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartz-diorite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 0.2 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.
Hiles straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the east side runs to Lake Michigan; most of the rest goes to the Gulf of America.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches the Gulf of America by way of Furbush Creek, the Eagle, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 2,030 river miles. One that lands on the east side reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Pine River and the Menominee: about 180 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: Petenwell Lake, Lake Wisconsin, Lake Du Bay and Rainbow Flowage.
1,610 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hiles; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hiles has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 4° in January. About 30 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Hiles normally reaches 40° and falls to 23°. The record high is 63°, in 1953; the record low −3°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.49 in, fell in 1930.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Rhinelander Area threaded record (Rhinelander Oneida County Airport, 25 miles west-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
