The Montpelier 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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2° on Nov. 14, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 4° in 1933.
Montpelier’s center stands about 870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 850 ft to 930 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 54×. 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: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 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 Montpelier reaches Lake Erie by way of the Saint Joseph and the Maumee: about 210 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
140 miles of the trip are on the Maumee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Montpelier; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Montpelier has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 32 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Montpelier normally reaches 48° and falls to 32°. The record high is 72°, in 1956; the record low 2°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.65 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Montpelier, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
