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 580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 300 ft to 900 ft, a difference of 600 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Brushy Mountain, about 1,300 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
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 6 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 610 to 616 million years old. About 5 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.
Hornblende-gneiss. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 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 Broad Brook, the Chicopee and the Connecticut: about 100 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.
