The Burnham 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 1895. Next is 71° in 2022.
Burnham’s center stands about 160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 140 ft to 330 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Harris, about 1,260 ft, 14 miles east.
The section below crosses 8 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.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Schist, slate. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 434 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units 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 Burnham reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Meadow Brook, the Sandy Stream, the Twentyfive Mile Stream, the Sebasticook and the Kennebec: about 95 river miles.
60 miles of the trip are on the Kennebec.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Burnham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Burnham has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. About 43 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Burnham normally reaches 47° and falls to 29°. The record high is 66°, in 1930; the record low 7°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.01 in, fell in 1904.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Waterville Treatment Plt, 16 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
