The Wilmington 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.
Wilmington’s center stands about 100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 70 ft to 230 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blakes Hill, about 500 ft, 14 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Andover Granite (granite, pegmatite), from the Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 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 52×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granite, pegmatite. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Tonalite, diorite. Age: Silurian, 425 to 435 million years old. 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. 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 Wilmington reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Ipswich: about 35 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wilmington; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wilmington 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 Wilmington 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, 8 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
