The Pittsfield 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.
0° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1886. Next is 1° in 1933.
Pittsfield’s center stands about 760 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 700 ft to 820 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sinnipee Group (dolostone), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 53×. 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: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 1.0 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 0.3 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 Pittsfield reaches Lake Michigan by way of the West Branch Suamico and the Suamico: about 16 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pittsfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pittsfield has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 56 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Pittsfield normally reaches 44° and falls to 30°. The record high is 65°, in 1958; the record low 3°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.95 in, fell in 1956.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1886 from the Green Bay Area threaded record (Green Bay A S International Airport, 11 miles south-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.