The Wells River 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
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Partly cloudy
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−1° on Nov. 17, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 0° in 1916.
Wells River’s center stands about 450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 400 ft to 1,360 ft, a difference of 960 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Moosilauke, about 4,790 ft, 14 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Albee Formation (metasandstone, metasiltstone, phyllite), from the Middle Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 485 to 500 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 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.
Metasandstone, metasiltstone, phyllite. Age: Middle Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 485 to 500 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Phyllite, limestone. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite, metaconglomerate. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 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. 4 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 Wells River reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Wells and the Connecticut: about 270 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wells River; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wells River has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 87 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Wells River normally reaches 46° and falls to 29°. The record high is 64°, in 1989; the record low 3°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.64 in, fell in 1937.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Saint Johnsbury, 18 miles north, 250 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
