The Townshend 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
0° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 6° in 1905.
Townshend’s center stands about 710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 430 ft to 1,660 ft, a difference of 1,230 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stratton Mountain, about 3,940 ft, 13 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Biotite-quartz-plagioclase gneiss, from the Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.6 billion years old.
The section below crosses 19 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 to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Amphibolite, greenstone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Phyllite, limestone. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite, mica-schist. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granofels, quartzite. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Paragneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 938 to 960 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 13 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 Townshend reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Mill Brook, the West River and the Connecticut: about 170 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Townshend; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Townshend has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 60 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Townshend normally reaches 47° and falls to 27°. The record high is 68°, in 1989; the record low 6°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.61 in, fell in 1937.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Keene, 19 miles east-southeast, 200 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
