The Mackford 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.
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Partly cloudy
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Chance of showers
−1° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 1° in 1986.
Mackford’s center stands about 990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 850 ft to 1,050 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million 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.
Mackford straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the southeast side runs to the Gulf of America; most of the rest goes to Lake Michigan.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Grand River and the Fox River: about 160 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. One that lands on the southeast side reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Branch Rock, the West Branch Rock, the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,780 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Winnebago 6124, Lake Butte des Morts and Puckaway Lake.
50 miles of the trip are on the Fox River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mackford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mackford 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 Mackford 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, 16 miles south-southeast, 130 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
