The Grafton 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.
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Partly cloudy; warmer
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73° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1987. Next is 73° in 2022.
Grafton’s center stands about 1,410 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,070 ft to 1,760 ft, a difference of 690 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Berlin Mountain, about 2,790 ft, 10 miles east-southeast.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Graywacke. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Graywacke. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, conglomerate, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 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. 5 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 Grafton reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Quacken Kill, Poesten Kill and the Hudson: about 180 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Grafton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Grafton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Grafton normally reaches 49° and falls to 30°. The record high is 63°, in 2011; the record low 16°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.65 in, fell in 2000.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1987 at North Adams Harriman Airport, 15 miles east-southeast, 760 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
