The Bernardston 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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70° on Nov. 12, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 69° in 2020.
Bernardston’s center stands about 370 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 290 ft to 1,210 ft, a difference of 920 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jolly Mountain, about 2,040 ft, 12 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows New Haven Arkose (arkose, siltstone, sandstone), from the Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million 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.
Schist, phyllite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Late Ordovician, 449 to 453 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite, schist. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 610 to 616 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. 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 Bernardston reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Connecticut: about 130 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bernardston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bernardston has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bernardston normally reaches 50° and falls to 30°. The record high is 62°, in 2011; the record low 12°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.79 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Orange Municipal Airport, 15 miles east-southeast, 170 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
