The Topsfield 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. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1925. Next is 75° in 2020.
Topsfield’s center stands about 200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 30 ft to 240 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Holt Hill, about 450 ft, 8 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Topsfield Granodiorite, from the Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old.
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 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.
Amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Alkali-granite, quartz-syenite. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Tonalite, diorite. Age: Silurian, 425 to 435 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metaclastic. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Monzonite. Age: Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 375 to 415 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 Topsfield reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Ipswich: about 16 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Topsfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Topsfield 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 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Topsfield normally reaches 51° and falls to 32°. The record high is 70°, in 2016; the record low 13°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 3.27 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1925 at Middleton, 5 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
