The Sheffield 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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−6° on Nov. 17, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1993. Next is −1° in 2018.
Sheffield’s center stands about 940 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 2,170 ft, a difference of 1,370 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Mountain, about 3,300 ft, 13 miles north-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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. 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 15 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite, phyllite, mica-schist. Age: Early Devonian, 404 to 414 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.
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 Sheffield reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Chamberlain Brook, Miller Run, the Passumpsic and the Connecticut: about 310 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sheffield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sheffield has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about −1° in January. About 43 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1993 at East Haven, 12 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
