The South Burlington 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. 16, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1883. Next is 71° in 2002.
South Burlington’s center stands about 320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 90 ft to 430 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Robbins Mountain, about 2,080 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Shelburne Marble, from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
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 16×. 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, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 7 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.
Shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Cambrian, 521 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartz-feldspar-schist, phyllite, metagraywacke. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, dolostone, quartzite. Age: Middle Cambrian, 497 to 521 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 South Burlington reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Winooski and the Richelieu: about 140 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Lake Champlain.
80 miles of the trip are on the Richelieu.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of South Burlington; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
South Burlington has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 88 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 South Burlington normally reaches 47° and falls to 33°. The record high is 67°, in 1959; the record low 10°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.14 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1883 from the Burlington Area threaded record (Burlington International Airport, here). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
