The Otter Creek 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
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.
Otter Creek’s center stands about 1,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 990 ft to 1,240 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cambrian, undivided (sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 51×. 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 24 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 Otter Creek reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bears Grass Creek, the Eau Claire, the Chippewa and the Mississippi: about 1,840 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Otter Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Otter Creek 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 Otter Creek 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, 20 miles northwest, 220 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
