The New Haven 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.
10° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 10° in 2019.
New Haven’s center stands about 580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 510 ft to 830 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gobblers Knob Hill, about 1,040 ft, 11 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Point Pleasant Formation (limestone, shale), from the Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 36×. 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, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 454 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 New Haven reaches the Gulf of America by way of Howard Creek, the Dry Fork Whitewater, the Whitewater, the Great Miami, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,470 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of New Haven; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
New Haven has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 45 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 New Haven normally reaches 54° and falls to 33°. The record high is 78°, in 1931; the record low 10°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.45 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Fairfield, 10 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.