The Bethel 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
2° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 3° in 1940.
Bethel’s center stands about 730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 700 ft to 800 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Osagean Series (limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
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.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 24 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 Bethel reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North River and the Mississippi: about 1,340 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bethel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bethel has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 18 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Bethel normally reaches 52° and falls to 33°. The record high is 76°, in 1971; the record low 3°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.60 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Steffenville, 10 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
