The Caribou 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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67° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1939. Next is 66° in 2002.
Caribou’s center stands about 450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 370 ft to 660 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Fogelin Hill, about 1,040 ft, 11 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian Spragueville Formation (mudstone, limestone), from the Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 32×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 459 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Mudstone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Graywacke, slate. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 459 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. 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.
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 Caribou reaches the Bay of Fundy and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Aroostook and the Saint John: about 200 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Caribou; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Caribou has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. A normal year brings about 118 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Caribou normally reaches 40° and falls to 26°. The record high is 60°, in 1951; the record low 3°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.22 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1939 from the Caribou Area threaded record (Caribou Wfo, here, 170 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
