The Middlefield 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.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
70° on Nov. 15, 1956, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1925. Next is 69° in 1964.
Middlefield’s center stands about 1,670 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 850 ft to 1,980 ft, a difference of 1,130 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Judges Hill, about 2,300 ft, 12 miles north.
The section below crosses 16 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granofels, schist. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist, quartzite. Age: Silurian, 430 to 436 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Pelitic-schist, granofels. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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. 10 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 Middlefield reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Factory Brook, the West Branch Westfield, the Westfield and the Connecticut: about 110 river miles.
75 miles of the trip are on the Connecticut.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Middlefield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Middlefield has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. About 44 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Middlefield normally reaches 47° and falls to 30°. The record high is 63°, in 1959; the record low 13°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.45 in, fell in 1959.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1925 at Pittsfield Municipal Airport, 15 miles west-northwest, 520 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
