The Gardner 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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69° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1906. Next is 67° in 2022.
Gardner’s center stands about 1,070 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 920 ft to 1,250 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wachusett Mountain, about 2,000 ft, 8 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Paxton Formation (granofels, schist), from the Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 17×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granofels, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 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.
Granite. Age: Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 375 to 405 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. 4 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 Gardner reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Pond Brook, the Otter, the Millers and the Connecticut: about 170 river miles.
130 miles of the trip are on the Connecticut.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gardner; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gardner has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 75 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1906 at Ashburnham, 5 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
