The Watertown 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.
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6° on Nov. 14, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1932. Next is 10° in 1986.
Watertown’s center stands about 590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 350 ft to 900 ft, a difference of 550 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Above All, about 1,510 ft, 15 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Collinsville Formation (gneiss, amphibolite), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 18×. 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, granofels. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Gneiss, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Schist, granofels. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 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, amphibolite. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granofels. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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. 2 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 Watertown reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Smith Pond Brook, Steele Brook, the Naugatuck and the Housatonic: about 40 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Watertown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Watertown has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 39 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 54 inches of water.
On November 14 Watertown normally reaches 53° and falls to 33°. The record high is 72°, in 1993; the record low 6°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1970.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1932 at Burlington, 16 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
