The Preston 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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70° on Nov. 16, 2001, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1930. Next is 69° in 1941.
Preston’s center stands about 960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 950 ft to 1,030 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Friendship Mound, about 1,300 ft, 3 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cambrian, undivided (sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 53×. 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 24 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 Preston reaches the Gulf of America by way of Carter Creek, Little Roche a Cri Creek, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,790 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Wisconsin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Preston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Preston has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Preston normally reaches 44° and falls to 26°. The record high is 62°, in 1944; the record low 2°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1930 at Friendship, 4 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
