The Boston 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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80° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1943. Next is 72° in 2021.
Boston’s center stands about 770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 1,240 ft, a difference of 520 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sheppler Hill, about 1,430 ft, 11 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glenshaw Formation (shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
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 28×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale, clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 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 Boston reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Youghiogheny, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,970 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Boston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Boston has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. About 41 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1943 at Braddock Lock 2, 6 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
