The Shelton 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
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.
Shelton’s center stands about 60 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 10 ft to 580 ft, a difference of 570 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Sanford, about 930 ft, 13 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pumpkin Ground Member [of Harrison (Prospect) Gneiss], from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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 23×. 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. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Schist, granofels. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Schist, hornblende-gneiss, granofels. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist, phyllite. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 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 Shelton reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Means Brook, the Farmill and the Housatonic: about 13 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Shelton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Shelton 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 Shelton 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, 11 miles south). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
