The Boston 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
20° on Nov. 14, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1955. Next is 21° in 1967.
Boston’s center stands about 50 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 90 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country. Open water lies within three miles.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Omar Formation - Accomack Member (sand, gravel, silt), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.3 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 Boston reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Nandua Creek: about 4 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Boston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Boston has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Boston normally reaches 61° and falls to 42°. The record high is 76°, in 1993; the record low 20°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.98 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1955 at Painter 2 W, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
