The Montague 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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77° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 76° in 2020.
Montague’s center stands about 250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 110 ft to 1,110 ft, a difference of 1,000 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pocumtuck Mountain, about 1,890 ft, 15 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mount Toby Formation (conglomerate, sandstone), from the Early Jurassic, 183 to 200 million years old.
The section below crosses 15 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 14×. 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. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 610 to 616 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 440 to 454 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Arkose, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Jurassic, 183 to 200 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. 9 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 Montague reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Pond Brook, the Sawmill and the Connecticut: about 120 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Montague; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Montague has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Montague normally reaches 50° and falls to 30°. The record high is 71°, in 1973; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.12 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Amherst, 10 miles south, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
