The Oronoque 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; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
78° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 72° in 2022.
Oronoque’s center stands about 50 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 380 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Eden Hill, about 800 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Oronoque 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 31×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Orthogneiss. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Schist, granofels. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Greenstone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Schist, granofels. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 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. 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 Oronoque reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Farmill and the Housatonic: about 8 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Oronoque; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Oronoque has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 34 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Oronoque normally reaches 54° and falls to 39°. The record high is 68°, in 1959; the record low 20°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.84 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 from the Bridgeport Area threaded record (Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport, 6 miles south-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
