The Bellingham 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.
Bellingham’s center stands about 290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 190 ft to 430 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is King Hill, about 860 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Biotite granite, from the Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 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 40×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, graywacke. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Quartzite, schist, phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 615 to 645 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, graywacke. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million 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. 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 Bellingham reaches Boston Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Charles: about 70 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bellingham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bellingham 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 Bellingham 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-northeast, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
