The Bristol 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.
Showers likely
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
78° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1992. Next is 76° in 1994.
Bristol’s center stands about 1,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 860 ft to 1,450 ft, a difference of 590 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gannett Hill, about 2,320 ft, 10 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Genesee Group (shale), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 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.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million 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. 6 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 Bristol reaches Lake Ontario by way of Mud Creek, Ganargua Creek, the Erie Canal, the Clyde, the Seneca and the Oswego: about 130 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bristol; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bristol has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 55 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Bristol normally reaches 50° and falls to 32°. The record high is 69°, in 2010; the record low 15°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.51 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1992 at Honeoye, 6 miles southwest, 360 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
