The Cheshire 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.
Cheshire’s center stands about 260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 150 ft to 690 ft, a difference of 540 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lindsley Hill, about 1,070 ft, 9 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows New Haven Arkose, from the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 237 million years old.
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 19×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Arkose. Age: Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 237 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Schist, granofels. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Basalt, gabbro. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 0.7 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.
A raindrop that lands in Cheshire reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Tenmile and the Quinnipiac: about 30 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cheshire; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cheshire 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 Cheshire 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, 17 miles south, 250 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
