The Charlestown 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
68° on Nov. 11, 2002, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 68° in 2022.
Charlestown’s center stands about 390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 280 ft to 1,400 ft, a difference of 1,120 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Ascutney, about 3,140 ft, 14 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Waits River Formation - muscovite porphyroblastic carbonaceous schist member (staurolite-grade rocks) (muscovite-schist, metagraywacke), from the Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old.
The section below crosses 15 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Phyllite, limestone. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke. Age: Early Devonian, 410 to 414 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist, metagraywacke. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Paragneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 938 to 960 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Slate, phyllite, mica-schist. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 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. 9 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 Charlestown reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Connecticut: about 180 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Charlestown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Charlestown has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Charlestown normally reaches 47° and falls to 28°. The record high is 62°, in 2016; the record low 11°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.12 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Springfield Hartness State Airport, 9 miles northwest, 180 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
