The Plainfield 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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70° on Nov. 15, 1956, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1925. Next is 69° in 1964.
Plainfield’s center stands about 1,480 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,130 ft to 2,000 ft, a difference of 870 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Crum Hill, about 2,830 ft, 15 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Goshen Formation (schist), from the Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granofels, schist. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 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. 7 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 Plainfield reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Mill Brook, the Westfield and the Connecticut: about 120 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 Plainfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Plainfield 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 Plainfield 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, 20 miles west-southwest, 330 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
