The Seneca 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
71° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 70° in 2001.
Seneca’s center stands about 1,020 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,000 ft to 1,110 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cary Mound, about 1,300 ft, 15 miles west-northwest.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 62×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.9 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, metavolcanic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.9 to 1.9 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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 Seneca reaches the Gulf of America by way of Moccasin Creek, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,820 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Petenwell Lake and Lake Wisconsin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Seneca; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Seneca has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. About 31 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Wisconsin Rapids Alexander Field, 7 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
