The Ripon 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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5° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 8° in 2014.
Ripon’s center stands about 940 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 810 ft to 1,040 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country.
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 61×. 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.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 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 Ripon reaches Lake Michigan by way of Silver Creek, the Puchyan and the Fox River: about 120 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lakes on the way: Lake Winnebago 6124, Lake Butte des Morts and Green Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ripon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ripon has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. About 31 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ripon normally reaches 45° and falls to 29°. The record high is 62°, in 2025; the record low 10°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.21 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Oshkosh Wittman Regional Airport, 17 miles northeast, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
