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.
Sunny
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; cooler
Showers likely
70° on Nov. 14, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 70° in 2001.
Bristol’s center stands about 1,780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,750 ft to 1,820 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pierre Shale (shale, bentonite), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 40×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 24 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.
Bristol has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 26 inches of water.
On November 14 Bristol normally reaches 40° and falls to 22°. The record high is 70°, in 1953; the record low −10°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.22 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Webster, 11 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
