The Sheldon 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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Showers likely
71° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 70° in 1953.
Sheldon’s center stands about 1,120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 1,360 ft, a difference of 480 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Limekiln Hill, about 1,400 ft, 11 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Prairie du Chien Group (dolostone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 32×. 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 15 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 9 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 Sheldon reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Kickapoo, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,730 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sheldon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sheldon has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 47 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Sheldon normally reaches 42° and falls to 25°. The record high is 67°, in 1990; the record low −9°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.60 in, fell in 1927.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Viroqua, 20 miles southwest, 140 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
