The Bristol 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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67° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1965. Next is 66° in 2022.
Bristol’s center stands about 80 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 210 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cordwood Hill, about 370 ft, 14 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Devonian - Ordovician Bucksport Formation (sandstone, limestone), from the Ordovician to Devonian, 359 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Ordovician to Devonian, 359 to 487 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Slate. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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.
Rain that falls on Bristol runs straight into the Atlantic Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bristol; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bristol has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 79 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 Bristol normally reaches 46° and falls to 33°. The record high is 62°, in 1973; the record low 11°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.03 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1965 at Newcastle, 11 miles north-northwest, 130 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
