The Pownal 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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73° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1987. Next is 73° in 2022.
Pownal’s center stands about 590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 520 ft to 2,370 ft, a difference of 1,850 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Greylock, about 3,490 ft, 10 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Walloomsac Formation (shale, phyllite, limestone), from the Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old.
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 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.
Shale, phyllite, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Early Cambrian, 521 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Carbonate, marble, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite, schist. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 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. 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 Pownal reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Jewett Brook, the Walloomsac, the Hoosic and the Hudson: about 210 river miles.
170 miles of the trip are on the Hudson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pownal; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pownal has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Pownal normally reaches 49° and falls to 30°. The record high is 63°, in 2011; the record low 16°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.65 in, fell in 2000.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1987 at North Adams Harriman Airport, 6 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
