The Lake Mills 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
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
−1° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 0° in 1986.
Lake Mills’s center stands about 840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 790 ft to 940 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Liberty Mound, about 1,060 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
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 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.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 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 Lake Mills reaches the Gulf of America by way of Koshkonong Creek, the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,690 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Koshkonong.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lake Mills; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lake Mills has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 42 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Lake Mills normally reaches 46° and falls to 29°. The record high is 70°, in 1971; the record low 5°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.77 in, fell in 1897.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Lake Mills Wwtp, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
