The Leicester 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.
Leicester’s center stands about 450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 340 ft to 1,460 ft, a difference of 1,120 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bread Loaf Mountain, about 3,800 ft, 12 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Shelburne Marble, from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 23 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.
Metagraywacke, muscovite-schist, phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone, dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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.
Shale, phyllite, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Cambrian, 521 to 542 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. 17 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 Leicester reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Leicester, Otter Creek and the Richelieu: about 180 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 Leicester; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Leicester 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 Leicester 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, 8 miles northwest, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
