The Alford 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 68° in 2002.
Alford’s center stands about 860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 1,640 ft, a difference of 920 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Everett, about 2,600 ft, 9 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Stockbridge Formation (marble), from the Early Cambrian, 521 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 15 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 14×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Slate, phyllite, schist. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Early Cambrian, 521 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Early Cambrian, 521 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Early Cambrian, 521 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 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. 9 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 Alford reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Seekonk Brook and the Housatonic: about 110 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alford has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. About 49 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Alford normally reaches 47° and falls to 28°. The record high is 68°, in 2010; the record low 8°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.87 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Lenox Dale, 11 miles northeast, 140 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
