The Turtle 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
0° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 3° in 1933.
Turtle’s center stands about 900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 980 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Zion, about 1,080 ft, 11 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sinnipee Group (dolostone), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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 16 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 468 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 454 to 459 million years old. About 4 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 Turtle reaches the Gulf of America by way of Turtle Creek, the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,630 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Turtle; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Turtle has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Turtle normally reaches 44° and falls to 28°. The record high is 74°, in 1971; the record low 6°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.83 in, fell in 1899.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Beloit, 6 miles west-southwest, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
