The Milton 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.
Chance of showers
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73° on Nov. 16, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1883. Next is 71° in 2002.
Milton’s center stands about 320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 170 ft to 1,250 ft, a difference of 1,080 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gilson Mountain, about 1,960 ft, 12 miles east-northeast.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Quartz-feldspar-schist, phyllite, metagraywacke. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Slate. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Cambrian, 521 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite. 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. 6 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 Milton reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Lamoille and the Richelieu: about 130 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 Milton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Milton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 88 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Milton normally reaches 47° and falls to 33°. The record high is 67°, in 1959; the record low 10°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.14 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1883 from the Burlington Area threaded record (Burlington International Airport, 12 miles south). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
