The Lake Chaffee 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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74° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1888. Next is 73° in 2020.
Lake Chaffee’s center stands about 850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 590 ft to 1,200 ft, a difference of 610 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Burley Hill, about 1,320 ft, 5 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Brimfield Schist (Includes Hamilton Resevoir Formation) (schist, gneiss), from the Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 14 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.
Mica-schist. Age: Late Ordovician, 449 to 453 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granofels, schist. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss, schist. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granofels, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 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. 8 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 Lake Chaffee reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Bebbington Brook, the Natchaug, the Shetucket and the Thames: about 60 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lake Chaffee; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lake Chaffee has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 39 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 Lake Chaffee normally reaches 51° and falls to 34°. The record high is 67°, in 1902; the record low 10°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 2.21 in, fell in 1937.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1888 at Storrs, 10 miles south, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
