The Foster 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
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
75° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1974. Next is 70° in 2020.
Foster’s center stands about 530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 360 ft to 740 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jerimoth Hill, about 860 ft, 5 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Esmond Igneous Suite - augen granite gneiss (gneiss, amphibolite), from the Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 15 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 29×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite. Age: Late Devonian, 366 to 380 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-granite. Age: Late Devonian, 366 to 380 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. 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. 9 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 Foster reaches Narragansett Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Hemlock Brook, the Ponaganset, the Pawtuxet and the Providence: about 35 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Foster; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Foster has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 62 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 54 inches of water.
On November 14 Foster normally reaches 50° and falls to 33°. The record high is 72°, in 1993; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.03 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1974 at North Foster 1 E, 5 miles north, 100 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
