The Bristol 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 72° in 2020.
Bristol’s center stands about 790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 680 ft to 860 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gander Mountain, about 960 ft, 9 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian, undivided (dolostone), from the Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 59×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 454 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 Bristol reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Des Plaines, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,580 river miles.
Lake on the way: Peoria Lake.
1,190 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bristol; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bristol has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 40 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Bristol normally reaches 46° and falls to 29°. The record high is 66°, in 2011; the record low 10°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.28 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at Union Grove Wwtp, 9 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
