The Northfield 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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72° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 71° in 1989.
Northfield’s center stands about 450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 310 ft to 1,020 ft, a difference of 710 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Kearsarge, about 2,910 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower part of Rangeley Formation (metaclastic), from the Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Metaclastic. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Pelitic-schist, metasandstone. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Quartz-diorite, tonalite, granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Monzodiorite. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Northfield reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Williams Brook, the Winnipesaukee and the Merrimack: about 120 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Northfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Northfield 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 Northfield 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, 4 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
