The Athol 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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69° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1947. Next is 62° in 2021.
Athol’s center stands about 2,390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,190 ft to 2,530 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is South Chilco Mountain, about 5,670 ft, 9 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Missoula Flood deposits (gravel, sand, silt), from the Pleistocene, less than 20,000 years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 20,000 years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Tonalite, granodiorite, quartz-diorite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 70 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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.
Athol has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in December. A normal year brings about 27 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 25 inches of water.
On November 14 Athol normally reaches 42° and falls to 28°. The record high is 60°, in 1995; the record low 0°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.63 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1947 at Bayview Model Basin, 7 miles east-northeast, 300 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
