The Orange 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
Chance of showers
−6° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1905. Next is 0° in 1986.
Orange’s center stands about 900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 890 ft to 1,130 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Johnson Hill, about 1,430 ft, 10 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cambrian, undivided (sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million 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 38×. 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 23 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 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 Orange reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Little Lemonweir, the Lemonweir, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,800 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Wisconsin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Orange; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Orange has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 47 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Orange normally reaches 45° and falls to 28°. The record high is 74°, in 1999; the record low 4°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.65 in, fell in 1931.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 at Mauston 1 SE, 14 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
