The Phillipston 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1959. Next is 73° in 1993.
Phillipston’s center stands about 1,180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 1,350 ft, a difference of 470 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wachusett Mountain, about 2,000 ft, 13 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Hardwick Tonalite (gneiss), from the Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 23×. 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, phyllite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 440 to 454 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Late Ordovician, 449 to 453 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granofels, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. 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. 3 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 Phillipston reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Beaver Brook, the Millers and the Connecticut: about 160 river miles.
130 miles of the trip are on the Connecticut.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Phillipston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Phillipston has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 60 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Phillipston normally reaches 50° and falls to 28°. The record high is 66°, in 1964; the record low 5°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.85 in, fell in 1975.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1959 at Barre Falls Dam, 10 miles south-southeast, 360 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
