The Needham 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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3.89 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 3.64 inches, fell in 1993.
Needham’s center stands about 730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 700 ft to 760 ft, a difference of 60 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Muscatatuck Group (limestone, dolostone), from the Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 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.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 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.
A raindrop that lands in Needham reaches the Gulf of America by way of Little Sugar Creek, Sugar Creek, the Driftwood, the Flatrock, the East Fork White, the White River, Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,460 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Needham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Needham has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 15 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Needham normally reaches 53° and falls to 34°. The record high is 76°, in 1931; the record low 10°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.70 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Shelbyville Sewage Plant, 10 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
