The Cranston 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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78° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1904. Next is 75° in 1909.
Cranston’s center stands about 70 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 10 ft to 260 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Chopmist Hill, about 790 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Narragansett Bay Group - Rhode Island Formation, from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 31×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary. Age: Neoproterozoic to Carboniferous, 299 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Late Devonian, 366 to 380 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 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. 4 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 Cranston reaches Narragansett Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Meshanticut Brook, the Pawtuxet and the Providence: about 16 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cranston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cranston has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 37 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Cranston normally reaches 54° and falls to 36°. The record high is 75°, in 1993; the record low 16°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 2.13 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1904 from the Providence Area threaded record (Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport, 4 miles south). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
