The Athens 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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71° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 69° in 1930.
Athens’s center stands about 360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 330 ft to 760 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Kelly Mountain, about 1,680 ft, 10 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian Sangerville Formation, Patch Mountain member (marble), from the Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 434 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Quartzite, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 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. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Athens reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the East Branch Wesserunsett Stream, the Wesserunsett Stream and the Kennebec: about 100 river miles.
80 miles of the trip are on the Kennebec.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Athens; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Athens has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 74 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Athens normally reaches 45° and falls to 27°. The record high is 69°, in 1930; the record low 5°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.03 in, fell in 1904.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Madison, 14 miles southwest, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
