The Middletown 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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72° on Nov. 12, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 67° in 2005.
Middletown’s center stands about 150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 260 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Shrub Hill, about 490 ft, 15 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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 600 to 601 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Siltstone, phyllite. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 0.7 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 Middletown reaches Narragansett Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Bailey Brook: about 2 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Middletown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Middletown has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Middletown normally reaches 53° and falls to 38°. The record high is 67°, in 2005; the record low 20°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.64 in, fell in 2000.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Newport State Airport, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
