The Dayton 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.
Dayton’s center stands about 270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 60 ft to 370 ft, a difference of 310 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Abbott Mountain, about 1,070 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Carboniferous granite (muscovite accessory mineral), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 359 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 26×. 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: Carboniferous, 299 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Mudstone, limestone. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Slate. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gabbro, diorite, ultramafic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic to Silurian, 422 to 1,000 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 Dayton reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Saco: about 16 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Dayton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Dayton 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 Dayton 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, 8 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
