The South Hampton 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 sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
77° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 75° in 1993.
South Hampton’s center stands about 180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 40 ft to 310 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Walnut Hill, about 600 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Merrimack Group, Eliot Formation (phyllite, quartzite, mica-schist), from the Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 47×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granofels, biotite-schist. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Phyllite, quartzite, mica-schist. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Tonalite, granodiorite. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 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 South Hampton reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Powwow and the Merrimack: about 17 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of South Hampton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
South Hampton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 58 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 South Hampton normally reaches 51° and falls to 31°. The record high is 74°, in 1989; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.85 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Haverhill, 10 miles south-southwest, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
