The Litchfield 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. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 73° in 1993.
Litchfield’s center stands about 1,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 810 ft to 1,240 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mohawk Mountain, about 1,680 ft, 8 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ratlum Mountain Schist (schist, granofels), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 16×. 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, granofels. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Schist, granofels. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 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 Litchfield reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Tannery Brook, the Bantam, the Shepaug and the Housatonic: about 65 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Litchfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Litchfield has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 59 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 54 inches of water.
On November 14 Litchfield normally reaches 50° and falls to 29°. The record high is 64°, in 2010; the record low 11°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.93 in, fell in 1970.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Bakersville, 11 miles northeast, 390 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
