The Winchendon 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.
Winchendon’s center stands about 990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 860 ft to 1,260 ft, a difference of 400 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Monadnock Mountain, about 3,130 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Partridge Formation (includes Brimfield Schist of Emerson, 1917) (mica-schist), from the Late Ordovician, 449 to 453 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 21×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Pelitic-schist, metasandstone. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Schist, phyllite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Late Ordovician, 449 to 453 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 440 to 454 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
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. 6 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 Winchendon reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Millers and the Connecticut: about 160 river miles.
130 miles of the trip are on the Connecticut.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Winchendon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Winchendon 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, 8 miles southeast, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
