The Washington 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
Partly cloudy
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Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
72° on Nov. 11, 1964, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 71° in 2001.
Washington’s center stands about 1,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 940 ft to 1,230 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Happy Hill, about 1,530 ft, 14 miles east.
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 19 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 5 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 Washington reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hill Point Creek, Narrows Creek, the Baraboo, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,780 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Wisconsin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Washington; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Washington has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Washington normally reaches 46° and falls to 28°. The record high is 70°, in 1971; the record low −4°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Reedsburg Wwtp, 10 miles northeast, 200 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
