The Willow 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.
72° on Nov. 11, 1964, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 71° in 2001.
Willow’s center stands about 1,120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 760 ft to 1,200 ft, a difference of 440 ft: hilly country.
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 35×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 12 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 Willow reaches the Gulf of America by way of Willow Creek, the Pine River, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,680 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Willow; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Willow 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 Willow 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, 15 miles east-northeast, 240 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.