Decorative drawing: a small American settlement seen from a low hill. Not a photograph of this place.

Westminster, Massachusetts

40 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1887 and the latest in 1988. It stands in Westminster town. It lies in ZIP code area 01473. It stands on Academy Hill. The Survey maps it on the Gardner quadrangle.

Westminster within Worcester County

Then and now

1887 to 1988

The same ground, surveyed 101 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Westminster, surveyed 1988

Topographic sheet of Westminster, surveyed 1887

Topographic sheets covering this place

40 sheets

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

Fires nearby

81 since 2015

The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 81 fires within 5 miles of Westminster between 2015 and 2020, burning about 68 acres in total. 1 started naturally. 3 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	45
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	14
Smoking	10
Recreation and ceremony	4
Arson/incendiarism	3
Misuse of fire by a minor	2
Power generation/transmission/distribution	1
Equipment and vehicle use	1
Natural	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
27 September 2015	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
26 August 2020	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
21 August 2020	Debris and open burning	1.8 acres	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
10 August 2015	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	3.5 acres	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
6 July 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
6 July 2016	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
4 July 2016	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
3 July 2016	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Worcester County

Specimens collected nearby

12 of 432 shown

Museums hold 432 specimens collected within 10 miles of Westminster between 1870 and 1973: 245 Plantae, 111 Fungi, 68 Animalia, 3 Chromista, 3 Protozoa, 2 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. B. Seymour, A. F. Newton, A. Ferrett and others. Each is a physical object with a catalogue number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be concluded from a species being absent.

Species	Year	Collected by	Where, as recorded
Porella platyphylla (L.) Pfeiff.	1895	James F. Collins	South spur, Mount Wachusett
Athyrium filix-femina subsp. angustum (Willd.) R.T.Clausen	1900	Davenport	Pine Hill; Medford
Carex maritima Gunnerus	1870	J. W. Congdon	Wellville
Hylesinus aculeatus Say & T., 1824	1872	unknown	Fitchburg
Carex foenea Willd.	1878	W. Boott	Wachusett Mountain
Sibbaldiopsis tridentata (Aiton) Rydb.	1879	Bailey, W.W.	summit of Mt. Wachusett
Diploschistes scruposus (Schreb.) Norman	1880	Alex Walther	[illegible]
Calla palustris L.	1883	G. F. Whittemore	Fitchburg
Myosotis laxa Lehm.	1883	Collector unspecified	Leominster.
Puccinia thalictri Chevall.	1884	F. S. Sargent	Lumenberg
Arthuriomyces peckianus (Howe) Cummins & Y.Hirats.	1892	W. B. Hosmer
Moneses uniflora (L.) A.Gray	1893	J. F. Collins

All 432 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Storms nearby

10 since 2005

The National Weather Service names Westminster in 10 storm reports between 2005 and 2018: 3 thunderstorm wind, 3 hail, 2 flash flood, 1 lightning. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
March 2008	Flood	Westminster	$25,000	In Westminster and Athol and Leicester, several basements were flooded. The Blackstone River overflowed its banks in Uxbridge spilling on to Blackstone and Lower Mendon Streets and flooding basements on Blackstone Street. In Worcester, there were flooded basements on Milbury, Hooper, and Brookline Streets. In addition, Beaver Brook overflowed flooding a parking lot.
June 2005	Thunderstorm Wind	Westminster	$20,000	no account filed
June 2005	Lightning	Westminster	$15,000	no account filed
June 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Westminster	$10,000	no account filed
May 2017	Thunderstorm Wind	Westminster	$1,000	At 9 PM EST, a tree was reported down and blocking East Road near Leino Park Road in Westminster.
September 2018	Flash Flood	Westminster	-	At 9:16 AM EST, moderate flooding was reported under several railroad underpasses southwest of Fitchburg. This included Princeton Road and State Route 2A.
August 2015	Hail	Westminster	-	Quarter to golf ball size hail fell in Westminster.
March 2012	Hail	Westminster	-	Quarter size hail covered the road.
July 2007	Flash Flood	Westminster	-	Several feet of water over route 31 in Westminster. A police cruiser was trapped in the flood waters.
August 2008	Hail	Westminster	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Worcester County

Nearest settlements

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Place	Distance	Sheets
Mantyranta	1.6 miles	40
Bakers Grove	1.6 miles	40
Lakewood Park	2.0 miles	40
Wachusett	2.2 miles	42
Leino Park	2.3 miles	40
Whitmanville	2.6 miles	40
East Gardner	3.1 miles	40
Waites Corner	3.4 miles	42

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 610169. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.

Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.

Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.