The Belchertown 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
75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1942. Next is 67° in 2024.
Belchertown’s center stands about 610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 310 ft to 1,040 ft, a difference of 730 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Brushy Mountain, about 1,300 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Fourmile Gneiss (biotite-gneiss, amphibolite), from the Late Ordovician to Silurian, 440 to 454 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 20×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Biotite-gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 440 to 454 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Quartz-monzodiorite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 610 to 616 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Hornblende-gneiss. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist, amphibolite, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 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. 4 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 Belchertown reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Jabish Brook, the Swift, the Chicopee and the Connecticut: about 110 river miles.
80 miles of the trip are on the Connecticut.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Belchertown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Belchertown has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1942 at Belchertown, 3 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
