The Sturbridge 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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73° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1962. Next is 73° in 2020.
Sturbridge’s center stands about 610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 530 ft to 1,010 ft, a difference of 480 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Burley Hill, about 1,320 ft, 9 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Littleton Formation (schist, phyllite), from the Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 26×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mica-schist. Age: Late Ordovician, 449 to 453 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Granofels, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Schist, phyllite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. 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. 3 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 Sturbridge reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Quinebaug, the Shetucket and the Thames: about 75 river miles.
55 miles of the trip are on the Quinebaug.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sturbridge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sturbridge has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 64 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 Sturbridge normally reaches 51° and falls to 32°. The record high is 69°, in 2010; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.97 in, fell in 2018.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1962 at East Brimfield Lake, 2 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
