The Essex 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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78° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 76° in 2022.
Essex’s center stands about 40 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 210 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Baldpate Hill, about 390 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Alkali-granite, quartz-syenite. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Tonalite, diorite. Age: Silurian, 425 to 435 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Early Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 478 to 523 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 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 Essex reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Soginese Creek: about 1 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Essex; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Essex has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 51 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Beverly, 4 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
