The Lancaster 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
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
76° on Nov. 12, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 75° in 2020.
Lancaster’s center stands about 290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 220 ft to 610 ft, a difference of 390 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wachusett Mountain, about 2,000 ft, 11 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Littleton Formation (schist, phyllite), from the Early Devonian, 394 to 422 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 18×. 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, gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Schist, phyllite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 375 to 405 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granofels, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, muscovite-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 375 to 405 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. 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 Lancaster reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Ponakin Brook, the North Nashua, the Nashua and the Merrimack: about 95 river miles.
55 miles of the trip are on the Merrimack.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lancaster; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lancaster has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. About 43 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lancaster normally reaches 53° and falls to 33°. The record high is 70°, in 1959; the record low 14°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 3.12 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Bedford Hanscom Field, 19 miles east, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
