The Orange 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
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
0° on Nov. 17, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 4° in 1967.
Orange’s center stands about 1,500 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,130 ft to 2,720 ft, a difference of 1,590 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Signal Mountain, about 3,360 ft, 6 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Waits River Formation - carbonaceous phyllite and limestone member (phyllite, limestone), from the Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Quartzite, phyllite, mica-schist. Age: Early Devonian, 404 to 414 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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.
Orange straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the northwest side runs to the St. Lawrence River; most of the rest goes to Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Waits and the Connecticut: about 270 river miles. One that lands on the northwest side reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of Great Brook, the Winooski and the Richelieu: about 200 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Orange; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Orange 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 Orange 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, 9 miles west-northwest, 400 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
