The Braintree Town 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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77° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1960. Next is 76° in 2020.
Braintree Town’s center stands about 110 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 10 ft to 310 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Great Blue Hill, about 630 ft, 6 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dedham Granite, from the Neoproterozoic, 615 to 645 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 52×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 615 to 645 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Argillite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Alkali-granite. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Argillite. Age: Early Cambrian to Middle Cambrian, 497 to 542 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 Braintree Town reaches Boston Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Monatiquot: about 6 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Braintree Town; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Braintree Town has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 51 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 52 inches of water.
On November 14 Braintree Town normally reaches 53° and falls to 36°. The record high is 72°, in 1993; the record low 16°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.75 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1960 at Hingham, 5 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
