The Clinton 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.
Clinton’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 240 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Totoket Mountain, about 760 ft, 14 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Potter Hill Granite Gneiss plus Narragansett Pier Granite (granite, gneiss), from the Neoproterozoic to Permian, 252 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 31×. 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, amphibolite. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gneiss, granofels. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
About 1 mi of the line.
Granite, gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic to Permian, 252 to 1,000 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.
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 Clinton reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Indian: about 2 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Clinton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Clinton 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 Clinton 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, 19 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
