The Greenfield 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1885. Next is 74° in 2022.
Greenfield’s center stands about 850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 760 ft to 1,490 ft, a difference of 730 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Monadnock Mountain, about 3,130 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
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 6 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 13 mi of the line.
Quartz-diorite, tonalite, granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metaclastic. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Quartzite, metasedimentary. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary. Age: Early Devonian, 394 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.
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 Greenfield reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Otter Brook, the Contoocook and the Merrimack: about 160 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 Greenfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Greenfield has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Greenfield normally reaches 51° and falls to 33°. The record high is 66°, in 2011; the record low 16°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.77 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1885 from the Manchester Area threaded record (Manchester Airport, 22 miles east, 620 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
