The Bethany 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.
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75° on Nov. 12, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 70° in 2024.
Bethany’s center stands about 590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 250 ft to 780 ft, a difference of 530 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lindsley Hill, about 1,070 ft, 14 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Beardsley Member [of Harrison (Prospect) Gneiss], from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 24×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 237 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist, phyllite. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Schist, hornblende-gneiss, granofels. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Bethany reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Sargent and the West River: about 13 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bethany; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bethany has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bethany normally reaches 54° and falls to 36°. The record high is 69°, in 1959; the record low 20°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.19 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at New Haven Tweed Airport, 13 miles south-southeast, 580 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
