Connecticut Geography & Climate

Connecticut is about 110 miles across and 70 deep, and divides into four strips. The coast runs 96 miles along Long Island Sound — sheltered water rather than open ocean, which is why the beaches are calm and the tides modest.

Up the centre runs the valley of the Connecticut River, the longest river in New England, which reaches the Sound without a major port at its mouth: a sandbar has blocked it since before European settlement, and that accident is why the lower valley stayed rural.

The northwest hills are the state's highest and most rural ground, rising towards the Berkshires. The northeast, known as the Quiet Corner, is farmland and forest and the least populated part of the state.

The southwest is effectively part of the New York metropolitan area, and feels it.

Summers are warm to hot and humid, more so inland than on the Sound, where the water keeps the shoreline several degrees cooler.

Winters are cold, with real snow. Nor'easters are the main weather event, and can deliver a foot or more along the coast; the northwest hills get substantially more than the shoreline.

Autumn is long, dry and the best season, with colour arriving in the northwest hills in early October and the coast a fortnight later.

Hurricanes reach the state occasionally, and the Sound's shape funnels storm surge into the shoreline towns.