The Bristol 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
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82° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1915. Next is 79° in 1973.
Bristol’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 90 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jericho Mountain, about 510 ft, 15 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Trenton Gravel (sand, clay), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 16 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 53×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Arkose. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 87 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian. 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. 10 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 Bristol reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Delaware: about 90 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bristol; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bristol has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 20 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 51 inches of water.
On November 14 Bristol normally reaches 55° and falls to 33°. The record high is 76°, in 1973; the record low 17°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 2.23 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1915 at Neshaminy Falls, 6 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
