The Bethlehem 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 73° in 1993.
Bethlehem’s center stands about 830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 470 ft to 1,120 ft, a difference of 650 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mohawk Mountain, about 1,680 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ratlum Mountain Schist (schist, granofels), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 16×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Schist, granofels. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Arkose, siltstone. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite, pegmatite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist, granofels. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 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 Bethlehem reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Weekeepeemee, the Pomperaug and the Housatonic: about 45 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bethlehem; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bethlehem has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 59 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 54 inches of water.
On November 14 Bethlehem normally reaches 50° and falls to 29°. The record high is 64°, in 2010; the record low 11°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.93 in, fell in 1970.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Bakersville, 18 miles northeast, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
