The Waitsfield 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.
Chance of showers
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0° on Nov. 17, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 4° in 1967.
Waitsfield’s center stands about 710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 650 ft to 2,240 ft, a difference of 1,590 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Ellen, about 4,060 ft, 6 miles west-southwest.
The section below crosses 15 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granofels, quartzite. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Phyllite, muscovite-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke, conglomerate, phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 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. 9 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 Waitsfield reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of High Bridge Brook, the Mad, the Winooski and the Richelieu: about 180 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 Waitsfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Waitsfield has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. About 39 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Waitsfield normally reaches 44° and falls to 27°. The record high is 65°, in 2011; the record low 5°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.74 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Montpelier - Edward F. Knapp State Airport, 13 miles east, 400 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
