The Atkinson 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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77° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 75° in 1993.
Atkinson’s center stands about 340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 70 ft to 400 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Patten Hill, about 660 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Merrimack Group, Berwick Formation (granofels, biotite-schist), from the Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 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.
Granofels, biotite-schist. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Metaclastic. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist, granofels. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 422 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. 5 smaller units 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 Atkinson reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Providence Hill Brook, the Spicket and the Merrimack: about 45 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Atkinson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Atkinson has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 58 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Atkinson normally reaches 51° and falls to 31°. The record high is 74°, in 1989; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.85 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Haverhill, 7 miles southeast, 320 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
