The Lafayette 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
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Showers likely
−3° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −3° in 1986.
Lafayette’s center stands about 960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 890 ft to 1,140 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Moldenhauer Hill, about 1,150 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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 52×. 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 20 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.9 billion years old. About 4 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 Lafayette reaches the Gulf of America by way of Stillson Creek, the Chippewa and the Mississippi: about 1,820 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Wissota.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lafayette; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lafayette has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 55 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Lafayette normally reaches 43° and falls to 25°. The record high is 70°, in 1990; the record low 0°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.12 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Eau Claire Area threaded record (Chippewa Valley Regional Airport, 10 miles west-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
