The La Crosse 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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73° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1872. Next is 71° in 1990.
La Crosse’s center stands about 680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 1,240 ft, a difference of 620 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bunker Hill, about 1,200 ft, 13 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cambrian, undivided (sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million 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 27×. 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 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 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.
A raindrop that lands in La Crosse reaches the Gulf of America by way of the La Crosse and the Mississippi: about 1,680 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of La Crosse; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
La Crosse has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 46 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 La Crosse normally reaches 46° and falls to 30°. The record high is 71°, in 1990; the record low 1°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.02 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1872 from the La Crosse Area threaded record (La Crosse Regional Airport, 5 miles north). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
