The Scituate 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.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
77° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1960. Next is 76° in 2020.
Scituate’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 170 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Turkey Hill, about 300 ft, 14 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dedham Granite, from the Neoproterozoic, 615 to 645 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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, gneiss, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, graywacke. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 615 to 645 million years old. About 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 Scituate reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the North River: about 2 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Scituate; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Scituate has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 51 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 52 inches of water.
On November 14 Scituate normally reaches 53° and falls to 36°. The record high is 72°, in 1993; the record low 16°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.75 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1960 at Hingham, 10 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
