The Monson 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
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Mostly sunny
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73° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1962. Next is 73° in 2020.
Monson’s center stands about 440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 330 ft to 1,050 ft, a difference of 720 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Burley Hill, about 1,320 ft, 8 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Monson Gneiss (gneiss, amphibolite), from the Late Ordovician to Silurian, 440 to 454 million years old.
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 17×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mica-schist. Age: Late Ordovician, 449 to 453 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, arkose. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 440 to 454 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist, phyllite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granofels, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 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. 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 Monson reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Chicopee Brook, the Quaboag, the Chicopee and the Connecticut: about 110 river miles.
80 miles of the trip are on the Connecticut.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Monson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Monson has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 64 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 Monson normally reaches 51° and falls to 32°. The record high is 69°, in 2010; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.97 in, fell in 2018.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1962 at East Brimfield Lake, 10 miles east, 260 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
