The Poultney 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.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
−5° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1916. Next is −4° in 1916.
Poultney’s center stands about 440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 350 ft to 1,010 ft, a difference of 660 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Woodlawn Mountain, about 3,110 ft, 14 miles south-southeast.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. 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, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Slate, phyllite. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Slate, phyllite. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Graywacke, slate. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Paragneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.4 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Graywacke, siltstone. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 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. 7 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 Poultney reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Poultney and the Richelieu: about 230 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Lake Champlain.
110 miles of the trip are on the Poultney.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Poultney; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Poultney 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 Poultney 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, 15 miles east-northeast, 180 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
