The Halifax 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
79° on Nov. 12, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 78° in 1993.
Halifax’s center stands about 100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 30 ft to 130 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pine Hills, about 410 ft, 15 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Rhode Island Formation (sandstone, graywacke), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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.
Sandstone, graywacke. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Granite, gneiss, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 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 Halifax reaches Narragansett Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Satucket, the Matfield and the Taunton: about 45 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Halifax; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Halifax has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 34 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Halifax normally reaches 54° and falls to 35°. The record high is 74°, in 1993; the record low 14°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 2.07 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Brockton, 8 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
