The Townsend 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
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Mostly sunny
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2° on Nov. 17, 1967, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1885. Next is 5° in 1933.
Townsend’s center stands about 320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 280 ft to 740 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Holt Peak, about 2,050 ft, 14 miles northwest.
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 13×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metasedimentary, muscovite-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metaclastic. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite, pegmatite. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist, phyllite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Pelitic-schist, metasandstone. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 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. 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 Townsend reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Squannacook, the Nashua and the Merrimack: about 90 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 Townsend; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Townsend has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 53 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Townsend normally reaches 52° and falls to 30°. The record high is 71°, in 1989; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.56 in, fell in 1940.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1885 at Nashua 2 NNW, 15 miles northeast, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
