The New Bedford 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
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76° on Nov. 12, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 72° in 2020.
New Bedford’s center stands about 110 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 180 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Copicut Hill, about 360 ft, 9 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alaskite (alkali-granite), from the Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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. Age: Neoproterozoic, 600 to 601 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Alkali-granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss, schist, amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 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.
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.
Rain that falls on New Bedford runs straight into the Atlantic Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of New Bedford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
New Bedford has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 46 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 New Bedford normally reaches 54° and falls to 34°. The record high is 68°, in 2005; the record low 16°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.74 in, fell in 2000.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at New Bedford Municipal Airport, 3 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
