The Waterville 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
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
69° on Nov. 12, 2002, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1993. Next is 67° in 2006.
Waterville’s center stands about 1,260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 630 ft to 2,580 ft, a difference of 1,950 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is The Chin, about 4,350 ft, 14 miles south.
The section below crosses 7 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, gneiss, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist, phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartz-feldspar-schist, phyllite, metagraywacke. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Phyllite, muscovite-schist, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Waterville reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the North Branch Lamoille, the Lamoille 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 Waterville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Waterville 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, 16 miles south-southeast, 520 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
