The Bristol 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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73° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1914. Next is 72° in 1952.
Bristol’s center stands about 770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 750 ft to 950 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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.
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 Bristol reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Saint Joseph: about 85 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bristol; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bristol has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 45 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Bristol normally reaches 49° and falls to 33°. The record high is 69°, in 1956; the record low 10°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.13 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1914 at Goshen 3 SW, 12 miles south-southwest, 100 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
