The Saugus 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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78° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1872. Next is 76° in 1909.
Saugus’s center stands about 50 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 240 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Prospect Hill, about 480 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 53×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, felsic-volcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic, 593 to 599 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 615 to 645 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Hypabyssal-basalt. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 0.3 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.
A raindrop that lands in Saugus reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Saugus: about 4 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Saugus; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Saugus has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 49 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Saugus normally reaches 52° and falls to 38°. The record high is 71°, in 1993; the record low 16°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.49 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1872 from the Boston Area threaded record (Boston Logan International Airport, 7 miles south). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
