The Danbury 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.
72° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 71° in 1989.
Danbury’s center stands about 840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 790 ft to 1,370 ft, a difference of 580 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Cardigan, about 3,110 ft, 9 miles north-northwest.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. 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 20 mi of the line.
Metaclastic. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartz-diorite, tonalite, granodiorite. 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.
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 Danbury reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Smith, the Pemigewasset and the Merrimack: about 140 river miles.
120 miles of the trip are on the Merrimack.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Danbury; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Danbury 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 Danbury 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, 11 miles east-southeast, 390 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.