The Lower Berkshire Valley 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
76° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 74° in 1927.
Lower Berkshire Valley’s center stands about 780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 630 ft to 1,180 ft, a difference of 550 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bowling Green Mountain, about 1,420 ft, 7 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cornwall Shale (shale, siltstone), from the Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old.
The section below crosses 18 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 20×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 497 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Syenite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 12 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 Lower Berkshire Valley reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Rockaway and the Passaic: about 75 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lower Berkshire Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lower Berkshire Valley has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lower Berkshire Valley normally reaches 52° and falls to 32°. The record high is 71°, in 1902; the record low 10°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.37 in, fell in 1935.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Charlotteburg Reservoir, 13 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
