The Dorset 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. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1940. Next is 65° in 2022.
Dorset’s center stands about 970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 810 ft to 2,870 ft, a difference of 2,060 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stratton Mountain, about 3,940 ft, 15 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chipman Formation - Bascom Formation (carbonate, marble, sandstone), from the Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. 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, metasiltstone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Carbonate, marble, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke, metasiltstone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite, slate, metasiltstone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite, metasiltstone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 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. 4 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 Dorset reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Mettawee and the Richelieu: about 250 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Lake Champlain.
130 miles of the trip are on the Mettawee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Dorset; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Dorset has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 at Peru, 10 miles east, 730 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
