The Fall River 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. 12, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 72° in 2020.
Fall River’s center stands about 150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 10 ft to 330 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Copicut Hill, about 360 ft, 2 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granite of the Fall River pluton, from the Neoproterozoic, 600 to 601 million years old.
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 58×. 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, 600 to 601 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, graywacke. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss, schist, amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 Fall River reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Stony Brook, the West Branch Westport and the East Branch Westport: about 18 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fall River; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fall River has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 46 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fall River normally reaches 54° and falls to 34°. The record high is 68°, in 2005; the record low 16°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.74 in, fell in 2000.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at New Bedford Municipal Airport, 8 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
