The Ridgeway 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, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 69° in 1964.
Ridgeway’s center stands about 1,150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 1,200 ft, a difference of 400 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blue Mounds, about 1,740 ft, 7 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sinnipee Group (dolostone), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million 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 35×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 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 Ridgeway reaches the Gulf of America by way of Smith Conley Creek, the East Branch Pecatonica, the Pecatonica, the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,770 river miles.
1,450 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ridgeway; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ridgeway has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 41 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Ridgeway normally reaches 45° and falls to 26°. The record high is 69°, in 1971; the record low −3°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.80 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Dodgeville Wwtp, 7 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
