The Waukesha 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.
Mostly sunny
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
1° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 1° in 1959.
Waukesha’s center stands about 830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 780 ft to 1,000 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lapham Hill, about 1,250 ft, 9 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian, undivided (dolostone), from the Silurian, 422 to 445 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 50×. 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: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. 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 Waukesha reaches the Gulf of America by way of Pebble Brook, the Fox River, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,600 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Peoria Lake and Fox Lake.
1,190 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Waukesha; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Waukesha has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 37 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Waukesha normally reaches 46° and falls to 29°. The record high is 70°, in 1971; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.09 in, fell in 1899.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Waukesha Wwtp, 3 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
