The Botsford 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.
10° on Nov. 16, 1996, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1937. Next is 14° in 1956.
Botsford’s center stands about 440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 300 ft to 690 ft, a difference of 390 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Titicus Mountain, about 1,030 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Brookfield Gneiss (orthogneiss), 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 23×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Orthogneiss. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Schist, granofels. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Schist, granofels. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 237 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.
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 Botsford reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Cold Spring Brook, the Pootatuck and the Housatonic: about 35 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Botsford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Botsford has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 49 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 53 inches of water.
On November 14 Botsford normally reaches 51° and falls to 34°. The record high is 73°, in 1993; the record low 16°, in 1939. The most rain on this date, 2.42 in, fell in 1937.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1937 at Danbury, 9 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.