The Minerva 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.
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
70° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1940. Next is 69° in 2012.
Minerva’s center stands about 1,760 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,440 ft to 2,690 ft, a difference of 1,250 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is North River Mountains, about 3,870 ft, 14 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Charnockite, granitic and quartz syenite gneiss (charnockite, gneiss), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old.
The section below crosses 5 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.
Charnockite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, migmatite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
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.
A raindrop that lands in Minerva reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Nate Pond Brook and the Hudson: about 280 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Minerva; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Minerva has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 4° in January. A normal year brings about 105 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Minerva normally reaches 42° and falls to 24°. The record high is 65°, in 1989; the record low −2°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.85 in, fell in 1959.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 from the Newcomb Area threaded record (Newcomb, 9 miles north-northwest, 110 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
