The Bethel 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 72° in 1956.
Bethel’s center stands about 560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 530 ft to 1,570 ft, a difference of 1,040 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Carmel, about 3,360 ft, 15 miles west-southwest.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. 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 4 mi of the line.
Granofels, quartzite. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Phyllite, muscovite-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite, phyllite, mica-schist. Age: Early Devonian, 404 to 414 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, quartzite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 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. 5 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 Bethel reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Third Branch White, the White River and the Connecticut: about 240 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bethel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bethel has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bethel normally reaches 47° and falls to 27°. The record high is 64°, in 1964; the record low 2°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 2.39 in, fell in 1937.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Woodstock, 15 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
