The Lake Tomahawk 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
Chance of showers
Showers likely
68° on Nov. 14, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is 67° in 1944.
Lake Tomahawk’s center stands about 1,650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,570 ft to 1,710 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
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 3 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 15 mi of the line.
Granite, tonalite, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 1.9 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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 Tomahawk reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,980 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Petenwell Lake, Lake Wisconsin, Lake Du Bay and Wisconsin River Flowage 4964.
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 Lake Tomahawk; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lake Tomahawk has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 1° in January. A normal year brings about 99 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Lake Tomahawk normally reaches 37° and falls to 23°. The record high is 68°, in 1953; the record low −8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.59 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Minocqua, 8 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
