The Amherst 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
72° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1952. Next is 72° in 2012.
Amherst’s center stands about 1,070 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,010 ft to 1,290 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Hammer Bluff, about 1,280 ft, 12 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower Ordovician (dolostone, sandstone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 32×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 0.7 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.
A raindrop that lands in Amherst reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Fork Root, the Root and the Mississippi: about 1,720 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Amherst; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Amherst has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 4° in January. A normal year brings about 42 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Amherst normally reaches 43° and falls to 24°. The record high is 72°, in 1999; the record low −4°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1952 at Preston, 10 miles west-northwest, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
