The Ipswich 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. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 76° in 2022.
Ipswich’s center stands about 40 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 220 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Holt Hill, about 450 ft, 14 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Metamorphosed mafic to felsic flow, and volcaniclastic and hypabyssal intrusive rocks (metavolcanic), from the Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Tonalite, diorite. Age: Silurian, 425 to 435 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Syenite. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Early Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 478 to 523 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Ipswich reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Ipswich: about 3 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ipswich; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ipswich has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 51 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Beverly, 6 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
