The Norton 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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Showers likely
71° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1939. Next is 70° in 1999.
Norton’s center stands about 910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 760 ft to 1,220 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Shelton Hill, about 1,310 ft, 10 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Cambrian (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 29×. 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.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 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.
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 Norton reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bear Creek, Rollingstone Creek, Garvin Brook and the Mississippi: about 1,720 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Norton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Norton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Norton normally reaches 44° and falls to 30°. The record high is 70°, in 1999; the record low 3°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1939 at Winona Dam 5 A, 11 miles east, 250 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
