The Pelican 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
Chance of showers
Showers likely
−9° on Nov. 16, 1932, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −6° in 1933.
Pelican’s center stands about 1,580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,540 ft to 1,660 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Baldy Hill, about 1,840 ft, 11 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mafic metavolcanic rocks (basalt, basaltic-andesite), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old.
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.
Granite, tonalite, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 1.9 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.9 to 1.9 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 5 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 Pelican reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Pelican, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,960 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Petenwell Lake, Lake Wisconsin, Lake Du Bay and Wisconsin River Flowage 4964.
1,610 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pelican; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pelican has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 4° in January. About 30 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Pelican normally reaches 40° and falls to 23°. The record high is 63°, in 1953; the record low −3°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.49 in, fell in 1930.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Rhinelander Area threaded record (Rhinelander Oneida County Airport, 7 miles west-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
