The Russell 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.
68° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1934. Next is 65° in 2011.
Russell’s center stands about 620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 550 ft to 960 ft, a difference of 410 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hay Meadow Mountain, about 1,780 ft, 15 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Biotite-quartz-plagioclase paragneiss, amphibolite, and related migmatite, from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 17×. 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. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Marble. 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 3 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, migmatite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Paragneiss. 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. 2 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 Russell reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of Plumb Brook, the Grass and the Saint Lawrence: about 70 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Russell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Russell has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1934 at Colton 2 N, 14 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.