The Franklin 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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12° on Nov. 16, 1996, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1956. Next is 14° in 1956.
Franklin’s center stands about 420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 140 ft to 550 ft, a difference of 410 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sunset Hill, about 850 ft, 13 miles north-northeast.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 28×. 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, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Schist, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gabbro. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 6 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 Franklin reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Beaver Brook, the Shetucket and the Thames: about 25 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Franklin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Franklin has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 28 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 52 inches of water.
On November 14 Franklin normally reaches 54° and falls to 35°. The record high is 72°, in 1993; the record low 17°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.25 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1956 at Norwich Public Utility Plant, 7 miles southeast, 400 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
