The Grafton 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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73° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1928. Next is 70° in 1993.
Grafton’s center stands about 850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 830 ft to 1,720 ft, a difference of 890 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Cardigan, about 3,110 ft, 6 miles north-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 5 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.
Granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 4 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.
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 Grafton 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 Grafton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Grafton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 66 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Grafton normally reaches 46° and falls to 27°. The record high is 62°, in 2010; the record low 8°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.64 in, fell in 1937.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1928 at Newport, 17 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
