The Bradford 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
68° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1925. Next is 68° in 2022.
Bradford’s center stands about 250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 150 ft to 430 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Preble Hill, about 1,060 ft, 14 miles west.
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 25×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Schist, slate. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Quartzite, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Marble, calc-silicate-rock, metasedimentary. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 1 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 Bradford reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the West Branch Dead Stream, the Dead Stream, the Pushaw Stream and the Penobscot: about 55 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bradford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bradford 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 75 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Bradford normally reaches 46° and falls to 30°. The record high is 63°, in 2005; the record low 8°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.56 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1925 from the Bangor Area threaded record (Bangor International Airport, 19 miles south-southeast, 100 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
