The Temple 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
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Mostly sunny
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Mostly sunny
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69° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1906. Next is 67° in 2022.
Temple’s center stands about 1,020 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 760 ft to 1,880 ft, a difference of 1,120 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Monadnock Mountain, about 3,130 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Spaulding Tonalite (quartz-diorite, tonalite, granodiorite), from the Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Quartz-diorite, tonalite, granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Pelitic-schist, metasandstone. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metaclastic. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss, biotite-schist, granofels. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metaclastic. Age: Early Devonian, 394 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. 4 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 Temple reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Temple Brook, Blood Brook, the Souhegan and the Merrimack: about 90 river miles.
60 miles of the trip are on the Merrimack.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Temple; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Temple has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 75 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1906 at Ashburnham, 14 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
