The Hampden 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. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1905. Next is 74° in 1909.
Hampden’s center stands about 330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 240 ft to 1,000 ft, a difference of 760 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Burley Hill, about 1,320 ft, 11 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ammonoosuc Volcanics (amphibolite, gneiss, quartzite), from the Late Ordovician, 449 to 453 million years old.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 16×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Conglomerate, arkose. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Arkose, siltstone. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Amphibolite, gneiss, quartzite. Age: Late Ordovician, 449 to 453 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granulite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 7 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 Hampden reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of West Brook, the Scantic and the Connecticut: about 90 river miles.
60 miles of the trip are on the Connecticut.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hampden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hampden has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 52 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Hampden normally reaches 52° and falls to 33°. The record high is 74°, in 1973; the record low 15°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.87 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 from the Hartford Area threaded record (Hartford-Bradley International Airport, 16 miles west-southwest, 160 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
