The Craftsbury 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.
69° on Nov. 12, 2002, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1993. Next is 67° in 2006.
Craftsbury’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 870 ft to 1,760 ft, a difference of 890 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Belvidere Mountain, about 3,320 ft, 13 miles northwest.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. 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 9 mi of the line.
Granofels, quartzite. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Quartzite, phyllite, mica-schist. Age: Early Devonian, 404 to 414 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metasandstone, metacarbonate, phyllite. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metadiabase. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 7 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 Craftsbury reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Black River, the Magog and the Saint-François: about 200 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Lake Memphremagog.
120 miles of the trip are on the Saint-François.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Craftsbury; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Craftsbury has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1993 at Morrisville Stowe State Airport, 14 miles west-southwest, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.