The Becket 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 68° in 2002.
Becket’s center stands about 1,230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,110 ft to 1,920 ft, a difference of 810 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Judges Hill, about 2,300 ft, 13 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tyringham Gneiss, from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old.
The section below crosses 16 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Quartzite, mica-schist. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, marble. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 10 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 Becket reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Walker Brook, the West Branch Westfield, the Westfield and the Connecticut: about 110 river miles.
75 miles of the trip are on the Connecticut.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Becket; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Becket 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 Becket 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, 9 miles west, 230 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
