The Lake Wissota 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
−3° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −3° in 1986.
Lake Wissota’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 1,030 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Moldenhauer Hill, about 1,150 ft, 14 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gneiss, migmatite, and amphibolite, from the Mesoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.9 billion 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 58×. 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 18 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.9 billion years old. About 7 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 Wissota reaches the Gulf of America by way of Lake Wissota, 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 Lake Wissota; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lake Wissota 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 Lake Wissota 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.
