The Holyoke 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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72° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1926. Next is 71° in 2022.
Holyoke’s center stands about 200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 40 ft to 710 ft, a difference of 670 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Pisgah, about 1,560 ft, 13 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Portland Formation (arkose, siltstone), from the Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 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.
Arkose, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, arkose. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Arkose, siltstone. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartz-monzodiorite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Hornblende-gneiss. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 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. 6 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 Holyoke reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Connecticut: about 85 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Holyoke; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Holyoke has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. About 45 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Holyoke normally reaches 51° and falls to 31°. The record high is 66°, in 2011; the record low 11°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.44 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1926 from the Westfield Area threaded record (Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport, 6 miles west-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
