The Shirley 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
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Mostly sunny
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76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1885. Next is 75° in 1909.
Shirley’s center stands about 290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 220 ft to 480 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wachusett Mountain, about 2,000 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 21×. 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. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granofels, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Schist, phyllite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, muscovite-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 375 to 405 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. 4 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 Shirley reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Bow Brook, Catacoonamug Brook, the Nashua and the Merrimack: about 85 river miles.
55 miles of the trip are on the Merrimack.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Shirley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Shirley has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Shirley normally reaches 51° and falls to 31°. The record high is 70°, in 1959; the record low 12°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 2.03 in, fell in 1895.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1885 at Lowell, 16 miles east-northeast, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
