The Thompson 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
Mostly sunny
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75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1962. Next is 74° in 1993.
Thompson’s center stands about 600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 300 ft to 660 ft, a difference of 360 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Coye Hill, about 1,130 ft, 14 miles west.
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 28×. 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: Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Alkali-granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 596 to 606 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Quartzite, pelitic-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.5 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 Thompson reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Baptist Brook, the French, the Quinebaug, the Shetucket and the Thames: about 65 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Thompson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Thompson 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 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Thompson normally reaches 51° and falls to 31°. The record high is 65°, in 2010; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.06 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1962 at West Thompson Lake, 2 miles west-southwest, 240 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
