The New Preston 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.
10° on Nov. 16, 1996, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1937. Next is 14° in 1956.
New Preston’s center stands about 670 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 500 ft to 1,230 ft, a difference of 730 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mohawk Mountain, about 1,680 ft, 10 miles north-northeast.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Gneiss. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Schist, granofels. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 393 to 419 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss, quartzite. Age: Early Cambrian, 521 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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. 1 smaller unit 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 New Preston reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Bee Brook, the Shepaug and the Housatonic: about 55 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of New Preston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
New Preston 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 New Preston 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, 19 miles south, 260 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.