The Portage 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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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.
Portage’s center stands about 800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 770 ft to 860 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sauk Point, about 1,630 ft, 12 miles 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 18 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 6 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.
Portage straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the south side runs to the Gulf of America; most of the rest goes to Lake Michigan.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Fox River: about 160 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. One that lands on the south side reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,730 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Winnebago 6124, Lake Butte des Morts and Puckaway Lake.
50 miles of the trip are on the Fox River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Portage; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Portage 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 Portage 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, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
