The Pacific 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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73° on Nov. 16, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1889. Next is 72° in 1964.
Pacific’s center stands about 820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 770 ft to 880 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sauk Point, about 1,630 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
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 27×. 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 16 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 8 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.
Pacific straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the north side runs to Lake Michigan; most of the rest goes to the Gulf of America.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches the Gulf of America by way of Duck Creek, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,720 river miles. One that lands on the north side reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Fox River: about 170 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Lake Wisconsin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pacific; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pacific has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 39 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Pacific normally reaches 45° and falls to 29°. The record high is 72°, in 1999; the record low 1°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.63 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1889 at Portage Wwtp, 2 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
