The Waltham 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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70° on Nov. 15, 1956, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1886. Next is 70° in 2002.
Waltham’s center stands about 690 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 130 ft to 670 ft, a difference of 540 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Abraham, about 3,990 ft, 15 miles east.
The section below crosses 16 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, dolostone, quartzite. Age: Middle Cambrian, 497 to 521 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.
Metagraywacke, conglomerate, phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, marble. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Early Cambrian, 521 to 542 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. 10 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 Waltham reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of Otter Creek and the Richelieu: about 160 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 Waltham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Waltham has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 59 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Waltham normally reaches 45° and falls to 29°. The record high is 67°, in 1959; the record low 0°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.93 in, fell in 2021.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1886 at Cornwall, 12 miles south, 340 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
