The Middlesex 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.
Showers likely
Mostly cloudy; warmer
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0° on Nov. 17, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 4° in 1967.
Middlesex’s center stands about 540 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 460 ft to 1,680 ft, a difference of 1,220 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Camels Hump, about 4,020 ft, 10 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Moretown Formation - “pinstriped” granofels member (granofels, quartzite), from the Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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, limestone. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granofels, quartzite. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist, gneiss, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Phyllite, muscovite-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite, phyllite, schist. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Middlesex reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of Great Brook, the Winooski and the Richelieu: about 170 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 Middlesex; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Middlesex has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. About 39 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Middlesex normally reaches 44° and falls to 27°. The record high is 65°, in 2011; the record low 5°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.74 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Montpelier - Edward F. Knapp State Airport, 8 miles southeast, 560 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
