The Branford 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
75° on Nov. 12, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 70° in 2024.
Branford’s center stands about 50 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 270 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Sanford, about 930 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 30×. 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, gabbro. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt, gabbro. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Mylonite. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 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. 1 smaller unit 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.
Rain that falls on Branford runs only a short way, about 3 miles, to Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Branford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Branford 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 Branford 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, 4 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
