The Fairfield 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.
Chance of showers
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75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1909. Next is 69° in 1948.
Fairfield’s center stands about 1,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 630 ft to 1,630 ft, a difference of 1,000 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jerseyfield Mountain, about 2,320 ft, 13 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Utica Shale (black-shale), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 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.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss, metasedimentary. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, migmatite. 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. 3 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 Fairfield reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of West Canada Creek, the Mohawk and the Hudson: about 260 river miles.
160 miles of the trip are on the Hudson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fairfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fairfield has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1909 at Trenton Falls, 16 miles northwest, 470 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
