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.
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70° on Nov. 15, 1956, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1886. Next is 70° in 2002.
Bristol’s center stands about 570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 340 ft to 2,170 ft, a difference of 1,830 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Ellen, about 4,060 ft, 8 miles east-northeast.
The section below crosses 19 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Quartzite. Age: Early Cambrian, 521 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Cambrian, 521 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke, conglomerate, phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, phyllite. Age: Middle Cambrian, 497 to 521 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Carbonate, marble, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 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. 13 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 Bristol reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of Little Otter Creek and the Richelieu: about 150 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Lake Champlain.
80 miles of the trip are on the Richelieu.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bristol; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bristol has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 59 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Bristol normally reaches 45° and falls to 29°. The record high is 67°, in 1959; the record low 0°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.93 in, fell in 2021.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1886 at Cornwall, 14 miles south-southwest, 220 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
