The Canaan 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.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
71° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 69° in 1930.
Canaan’s center stands about 250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 160 ft to 670 ft, a difference of 510 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Devils Head, about 900 ft, 15 miles north-northeast.
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 29×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Quartzite, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 434 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Marble, calc-silicate-rock, metasedimentary. Age: Silurian, 428 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 Canaan reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Carrabassett Stream and the Kennebec: about 85 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Canaan; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Canaan 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 Canaan 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, 16 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
