The Pittsfield 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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−5° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1916. Next is −4° in 1916.
Pittsfield’s center stands about 890 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 750 ft to 2,840 ft, a difference of 2,090 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Killington Peak, about 4,190 ft, 12 miles south.
The section below crosses 14 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. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Paragneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Paragneiss, quartz-feldspar-schist. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.4 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Cambrian, 487 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. 8 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 Pittsfield reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Guernsey Brook, the Tweed, the White River and the Connecticut: about 260 river miles.
220 miles of the trip are on the Connecticut.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pittsfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pittsfield has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 75 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Pittsfield normally reaches 47° and falls to 26°. The record high is 69°, in 1989; the record low 1°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1937.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1916 at Rutland, 13 miles southwest, 270 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
