The Clifton 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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68° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1925. Next is 68° in 2022.
Clifton’s center stands about 310 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 120 ft to 860 ft, a difference of 740 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Mountain, about 1,260 ft, 12 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Devonian - Ordovician Bucksport Formation (sandstone, limestone), from the Ordovician to Devonian, 359 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 19×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Ordovician to Devonian, 359 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, metavolcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 299 to 422 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 Clifton reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Parks Pond Brook, the Blackman Stream and the Penobscot: about 45 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Clifton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Clifton 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 Clifton 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, 15 miles west, 160 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
