The Lowell 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
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
−1° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 1° in 1986.
Lowell’s center stands about 830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 780 ft to 880 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ancell Group (sandstone), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million 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.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 5 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 Lowell reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Crawfish, the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,710 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Koshkonong.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lowell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lowell has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Lowell normally reaches 44° and falls to 27°. The record high is 70°, in 1971; the record low 9°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.35 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Beaver Dam Wwtp, 8 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
