The Cornish 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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73° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1994. Next is 70° in 2022.
Cornish’s center stands about 480 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 280 ft to 1,040 ft, a difference of 760 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Green Mountain, about 1,920 ft, 12 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Devonian - Silurian Rindgemere Formation lower member (mudstone, limestone), from the Silurian to Devonian, 359 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 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mudstone, limestone. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 0.6 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 Cornish reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Ossipee and the Saco: about 45 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cornish; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cornish has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 81 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 52 inches of water.
On November 14 Cornish normally reaches 46° and falls to 26°. The record high is 62°, in 2010; the record low 7°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.13 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1994 at Hollis, 12 miles south-southeast, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
