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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72° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1952. Next is 72° in 2012.
Bristol’s center stands about 1,330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,170 ft to 1,380 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Ordovician (limestone, dolostone), from the Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 47×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 388 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 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 2 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 454 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Bristol reaches the Gulf of America by way of Willow Creek, the South Branch Root, the Root and the Mississippi: about 1,750 river miles.
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 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 Bristol 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 north-northeast, 400 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
