The Prairie du Sac 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
−3° on Nov. 14, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −3° in 1986.
Prairie du Sac’s center stands about 800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 730 ft to 1,030 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sauk Point, about 1,630 ft, 12 miles northeast.
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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 24×. 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 19 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million 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 Prairie du Sac reaches the Gulf of America by way of Otter Creek, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,700 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Prairie du Sac; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Prairie du Sac has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Prairie du Sac normally reaches 46° and falls to 28°. The record high is 72°, in 1999; the record low −3°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.16 in, fell in 1956.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Baraboo Wwtp, 13 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
