The Taunton 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
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
74° on Nov. 12, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1994. Next is 73° in 2022.
Taunton’s center stands about 40 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 10 ft to 140 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is High Rock, about 460 ft, 15 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Rhode Island Formation (sandstone, graywacke), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Sandstone, graywacke. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 600 to 601 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 615 to 645 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.6 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 Taunton reaches Narragansett Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Mill and the Taunton: about 18 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Taunton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Taunton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Taunton normally reaches 52° and falls to 33°. The record high is 68°, in 2005; the record low 15°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.64 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1994 at Nws Boston/Norton, 4 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
