The Spruce 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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−4° on Nov. 13, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1959. Next is −3° in 1959.
Spruce’s center stands about 770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 850 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount LeBett, about 1,000 ft, 7 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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 57×. 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: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.6 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 Spruce reaches Lake Michigan by way of the North Branch Little, the Little River and the Oconto: about 35 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Spruce; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Spruce has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 57 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Spruce normally reaches 42° and falls to 25°. The record high is 68°, in 1999; the record low 7°, in 1965. The most rain on this date, 0.52 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1959 at Suring, 11 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
