The Westford 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
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Partly cloudy
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Chance of showers
−1° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 1° in 1986.
Westford’s center stands about 880 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 860 ft to 950 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Prairie du Chien Group (dolostone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 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 64×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 0.7 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 Westford reaches the Gulf of America by way of Beaver Dam Lake, the Crawfish, the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,740 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Koshkonong and Beaver Dam Lake.
1,450 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Westford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Westford has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Westford normally reaches 44° and falls to 27°. The record high is 70°, in 1971; the record low 9°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.35 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Beaver Dam Wwtp, 6 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
