The Pittsville 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.
70° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1912. Next is 68° in 1964.
Pittsville’s center stands about 1,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,000 ft to 1,110 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cary Mound, about 1,300 ft, 6 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gneiss, migmatite, and amphibolite, from the Mesoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.9 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 39×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, metavolcanic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.9 to 1.9 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.9 billion years old. About 2 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 Pittsville reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Yellow, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,830 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Wisconsin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pittsville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pittsville has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 57 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Pittsville normally reaches 42° and falls to 26°. The record high is 68°, in 1990; the record low 1°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1912 at Marshfield Experiment Farm, 14 miles north, 210 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.