The Sudbury 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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76° on Nov. 12, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 75° in 2020.
Sudbury’s center stands about 200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 110 ft to 410 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Barnard Hill, about 790 ft, 15 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granodiorite of the Indian Head pluton (granodiorite, tonalite), from the Precambrian to Silurian.
The section below crosses 15 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 37×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metavolcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 615 to 645 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite, pegmatite. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, tonalite. Age: Precambrian to Silurian. 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. 9 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 Sudbury reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Hop Brook, Wash Brook, the Sudbury, the Concord and the Merrimack: about 70 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sudbury; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sudbury has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. About 43 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Sudbury normally reaches 53° and falls to 33°. The record high is 70°, in 1959; the record low 14°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 3.12 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Bedford Hanscom Field, 9 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
