The Boxford 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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76° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1925. Next is 75° in 2020.
Boxford’s center stands about 120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 50 ft to 240 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Holt Hill, about 450 ft, 6 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sharpners Pond Diorite (tonalite, diorite), from the Silurian, 425 to 435 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 53×. 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, pegmatite. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Tonalite, diorite. Age: Silurian, 425 to 435 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Alkali-granite, quartz-syenite. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Early Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 478 to 523 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Boxford reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Fish Brook and the Ipswich: about 20 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Boxford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Boxford has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Boxford normally reaches 51° and falls to 32°. The record high is 70°, in 2016; the record low 13°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 3.27 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1925 at Middleton, 5 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
