The Burke 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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−6° on Nov. 17, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1993. Next is −1° in 2018.
Burke’s center stands about 980 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 810 ft to 2,200 ft, a difference of 1,390 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is East Mountain, about 3,440 ft, 9 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Waits River Formation - carbonaceous phyllite and limestone member (phyllite, limestone), from the Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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 14 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss, granofels, amphibolite. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
Quartzite, phyllite, mica-schist. Age: Early Devonian, 404 to 414 million years old. About 0.2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 Burke reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the East Branch Passumpsic, the Passumpsic and the Connecticut: about 310 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Burke; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Burke has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about −1° in January. About 43 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1993 at East Haven, 3 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
