The Lincoln 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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76° on Nov. 12, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 75° in 2020.
Lincoln’s center stands about 250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 110 ft to 360 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Nobscot Hill, about 620 ft, 9 miles southwest.
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 44×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Argillite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite, pegmatite. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Diorite, quartz-diorite. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 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. 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 Lincoln reaches Boston Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Stony Brook and the Charles: about 20 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lincoln; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lincoln 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 Lincoln 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, 3 miles north-northeast, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
