The Bristol 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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6° on Nov. 14, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1932. Next is 10° in 1986.
Bristol’s center stands about 320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 220 ft to 1,010 ft, a difference of 790 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jefferson Hill, about 1,240 ft, 12 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bristol 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 18×. 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. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Schist, granofels. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 237 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone, 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 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 1 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 Bristol reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Birge Pond Brook, the Pequabuck, the Farmington and the Connecticut: about 100 river miles.
55 miles of the trip are on the Connecticut.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bristol; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bristol has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 39 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 54 inches of water.
On November 14 Bristol normally reaches 53° and falls to 33°. The record high is 72°, in 1993; the record low 6°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1970.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1932 at Burlington, 9 miles north, 180 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
