The Wood River 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
69° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1971. Next is 66° in 1990.
Wood River’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 910 ft to 980 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chengwatana Volcanic Group (basalt), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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 40×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 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 Wood River reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Wood, the Saint Croix and the Mississippi: about 1,890 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Lake Mallalieu 175.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wood River; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wood River has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 61 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Wood River normally reaches 41° and falls to 26°. The record high is 66°, in 1999; the record low 5°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1971 at Luck, 15 miles south-southeast, 300 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
