The Darien 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
Mostly sunny
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17° on Nov. 15, 1996, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1946. Next is 18° in 1967.
Darien’s center stands about 60 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 Nonames Hill, about 810 ft, 14 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Trap Falls Formation plus Ordovician? granitic gneiss (schist, gneiss), from the Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 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 29×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Schist, granofels. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 393 to 419 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Mesoproterozoic. About 0.8 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 Darien reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Goodwives: about 1 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Darien; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Darien has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Darien normally reaches 53° and falls to 37°. The record high is 71°, in 1993; the record low 20°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.92 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1946 at Westchester Co Airport, 12 miles west, 310 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
