The Bethel 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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3.12 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1886. The next wettest, 2.50 inches, fell in 1937.
Bethel’s center stands about 730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 1,280 ft, a difference of 640 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Old Speck Mountain, about 4,180 ft, 14 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Devonian tonalite, from the Devonian, 359 to 422 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 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Tonalite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 414 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Metasandstone. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 0.9 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 Bethel reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Alder, the Androscoggin and the Kennebec: about 130 river miles.
110 miles of the trip are on the Androscoggin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bethel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bethel has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 82 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 43 inches of water.
On November 14 Bethel normally reaches 45° and falls to 26°. The record high is 66°, in 2012; the record low 4°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.05 in, fell in 1937.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1886 at Berlin, 20 miles west, 190 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
