The Lakes East 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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10° on Nov. 16, 1996, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1937. Next is 14° in 1956.
Lakes East’s center stands about 600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 450 ft to 960 ft, a difference of 510 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Birch Hill, about 1,280 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Basal marble member [of Walloomsac Schist], from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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 24×. 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. Age: Precambrian to Mesoproterozoic. About 8 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Early Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 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. 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 Lakes East reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Saugatuck: about 25 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lakes East; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lakes East has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 49 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 53 inches of water.
On November 14 Lakes East normally reaches 51° and falls to 34°. The record high is 73°, in 1993; the record low 16°, in 1939. The most rain on this date, 2.42 in, fell in 1937.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1937 at Danbury, 6 miles northeast, 200 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
