The Bradford 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 70° in 2022.
Bradford’s center stands about 720 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 1,180 ft, a difference of 540 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Kearsarge, about 2,910 ft, 9 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Kinsman Granodiorite, from the Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Quartz-diorite, tonalite, granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke. Age: Early Devonian, 410 to 414 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartz-diorite. Age: Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Tonalite. Age: Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 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 Bradford reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Warner, the Contoocook and the Merrimack: about 130 river miles.
100 miles of the trip are on the Merrimack.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bradford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bradford has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. About 49 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Salisbury, 13 miles east-northeast, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
