The Waterbury 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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69° on Nov. 12, 2002, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1993. Next is 67° in 2006.
Waterbury’s center stands about 440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 410 ft to 1,900 ft, a difference of 1,490 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is The Chin, about 4,350 ft, 15 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ottauquechee Formation - carbonaceous phyllite member, from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Muscovite-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist, gneiss, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 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. 3 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 Waterbury reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Little River, the Winooski and the Richelieu: about 170 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 Waterbury; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Waterbury has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1993 at Morrisville Stowe State Airport, 15 miles north-northeast, 300 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
