The Morrison 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.
0° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1886. Next is 1° in 1933.
Morrison’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 840 ft to 960 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian, undivided (dolostone), from the Silurian, 422 to 445 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 46×. 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: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 1 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 Morrison reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Branch and the Manitowoc: about 40 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Morrison; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Morrison has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 56 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Morrison normally reaches 44° and falls to 30°. The record high is 65°, in 1958; the record low 3°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.95 in, fell in 1956.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1886 from the Green Bay Area threaded record (Green Bay A S International Airport, 14 miles north-northwest, 240 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.