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.
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
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72° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 71° in 1989.
Bristol’s center stands about 480 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 330 ft to 1,240 ft, a difference of 910 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Cardigan, about 3,110 ft, 10 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Perry Mountain Formation, undivided (quartzite, metasedimentary), from the Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Pelitic-schist, metasandstone. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Metaclastic. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metaclastic. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary. Age: Early Devonian, 394 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. 2 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 Bristol reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Pemigewasset and the Merrimack: about 130 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 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. About 46 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bristol normally reaches 46° and falls to 27°. The record high is 65°, in 2010; the record low 9°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 1975.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Franklin Falls Dam, 9 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
