The Tunnel City 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.
73° on Nov. 12, 1964, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is 72° in 1953.
Tunnel City’s center stands about 1,090 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 950 ft to 1,350 ft, a difference of 400 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Limekiln Hill, about 1,400 ft, 6 miles south-southwest.
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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 36×. 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 23 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 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 Tunnel City reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Fork Lemonweir, Mud Creek, the Lemonweir, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,830 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Wisconsin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Tunnel City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tunnel City has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Tunnel City normally reaches 43° and falls to 25°. The record high is 69°, in 1999; the record low 0°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.55 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Mather 3 NW, 16 miles northeast, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.