The Lowell 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. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1885. Next is 75° in 1909.
Lowell’s center stands about 110 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 50 ft to 260 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jeremy Hill, about 600 ft, 8 miles north-northwest.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 48×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite, pegmatite. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Phyllite, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Silurian, 422 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Silurian, 428 to 438 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metaclastic. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 Lowell reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Concord and the Merrimack: about 40 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lowell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lowell has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lowell normally reaches 51° and falls to 31°. The record high is 70°, in 1959; the record low 12°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 2.03 in, fell in 1895.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1885 at Lowell, 2 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
