The Ashland 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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75° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1972. Next is 74° in 2020.
Ashland’s center stands about 200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 150 ft to 460 ft, a difference of 310 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Barnard Hill, about 790 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Hope Valley Alaskite Gneiss (alkali-granite), from the Neoproterozoic, 596 to 606 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 33×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Alkali-granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 596 to 606 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 615 to 645 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone. 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Ashland reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Sudbury, the Concord and the Merrimack: about 80 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ashland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ashland has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 56 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Ashland normally reaches 52° and falls to 34°. The record high is 71°, in 1993; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.96 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1972 at Walpole 2, 13 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
