The Madison 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.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
75° on Nov. 12, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 70° in 2024.
Madison’s center stands about 340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 60 ft to 440 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Beseck Mountain, about 860 ft, 12 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Monson Gneiss (gneiss, amphibolite), from the Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 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 26×. 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, amphibolite. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 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.
Gneiss, granofels. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 237 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt, gabbro. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
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 Madison reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Hammonasset: about 10 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Madison; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Madison has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Madison normally reaches 54° and falls to 36°. The record high is 69°, in 1959; the record low 20°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.19 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at New Haven Tweed Airport, 15 miles west-southwest, 330 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
