The Westminster 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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69° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1906. Next is 67° in 2022.
Westminster’s center stands about 1,070 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 690 ft to 1,260 ft, a difference of 570 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wachusett Mountain, about 2,000 ft, 4 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Paxton Formation (granofels, schist), from the Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 20×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
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 7 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 375 to 405 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Late Ordovician, 449 to 453 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. 2 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 Westminster reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Whitman, the North Nashua, the Nashua and the Merrimack: about 120 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 Westminster; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Westminster has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 75 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1906 at Ashburnham, 5 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
