The Ascutney 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.
68° on Nov. 11, 2002, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 68° in 2022.
Ascutney’s center stands about 410 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 290 ft to 2,240 ft, a difference of 1,950 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Ascutney, about 3,140 ft, 3 miles northwest.
The section below crosses 16 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Phyllite, limestone. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Syenite. Age: Early Cretaceous, 120 to 122 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke. Age: Early Devonian, 410 to 414 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist, metagraywacke. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Slate, phyllite, mica-schist. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 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. 10 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 Ascutney reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Connecticut: about 200 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ascutney; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ascutney has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ascutney normally reaches 47° and falls to 28°. The record high is 62°, in 2016; the record low 11°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.12 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Springfield Hartness State Airport, 7 miles southwest, 160 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.