The Wien 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.
69° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 68° in 1964.
Wien’s center stands about 1,320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,250 ft to 1,440 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alkali feldspar granite of 1835 Ma age group (alkali-feldspar-granite), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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 54×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granodiorite, tonalite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 1.8 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mylonite. Age: Archean to Paleoproterozoic. About 4 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, dacite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 1.8 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 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 Wien reaches the Gulf of America by way of Scotch Creek, the Big Rib, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,900 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Petenwell Lake, Lake Wisconsin, Lake Du Bay and Wisconsin River Flowage 4964.
1,610 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wien; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wien has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. A normal year brings about 64 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Wien normally reaches 41° and falls to 26°. The record high is 64°, in 1990; the record low −2°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.75 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 from the Wausau Area threaded record (Wausau Asos, 20 miles east, 120 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.