The Grafton 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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68° on Nov. 11, 2002, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 68° in 2022.
Grafton’s center stands about 870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 1,810 ft, a difference of 1,170 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Glebe Mountain, about 2,960 ft, 8 miles west.
The section below crosses 20 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.
Granofels, quartzite. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Phyllite, limestone. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist, metagraywacke. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Early Devonian, 402 to 412 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Paragneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.3 to 1.4 billion 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.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 14 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 Grafton reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Saxtons and the Connecticut: about 190 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Grafton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Grafton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Grafton normally reaches 47° and falls to 28°. The record high is 62°, in 2016; the record low 11°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.12 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Springfield Hartness State Airport, 13 miles north-northeast, 300 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
