The Shelburne Falls 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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77° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 76° in 2020.
Shelburne Falls’s center stands about 420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 360 ft to 1,490 ft, a difference of 1,130 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Borden Mountain, about 2,520 ft, 15 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Collinsville Formation (biotite-gneiss), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 14 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 4 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granofels, schist. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Arkose, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, black-shale. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 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. 8 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 Shelburne Falls reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Deerfield and the Connecticut: about 140 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Shelburne Falls; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Shelburne Falls has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Shelburne Falls normally reaches 50° and falls to 30°. The record high is 71°, in 1973; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.12 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Amherst, 18 miles southeast, 280 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
