The Keene 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
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Keene’s center stands about 4,460 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,000 ft to 4,800 ft, a difference of 2,800 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Marcy, about 5,290 ft, 2 miles west-southwest.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss, metaanorthosite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 23 mi of the line.
Anorthosite, metasedimentary. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, migmatite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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.
Keene straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the southwest side runs to New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean; most of the rest goes to the St. Lawrence River.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of Shanty Brook, the East Branch Ausable, the Ausable and the Richelieu: about 170 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic. One that lands on the southwest side reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Opalescent and the Hudson: about 320 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Champlain.
80 miles of the trip are on the Richelieu.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Keene; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
