The Littleton 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
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
−4° on Nov. 17, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is −1° in 1996.
Littleton’s center stands about 820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 1,790 ft, a difference of 1,070 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Lafayette, about 5,200 ft, 12 miles south-southeast.
The section below crosses 20 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metasandstone, metasiltstone, phyllite. Age: Middle Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 485 to 500 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metarhyolite. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Tonalite. Age: Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 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. 14 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 Littleton reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Palmer Brook, the Ammonoosuc and the Connecticut: about 290 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Littleton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Littleton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Whitefield Mount Washington Regional Airport, 12 miles east-northeast, 230 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
