The Eliot 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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3° on Nov. 17, 1967, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 6° in 1933.
Eliot’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 300 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Agamenticus, about 690 ft, 7 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian - Precambrian Z Kittery Formation (metasandstone, phyllite), from the Neoproterozoic to Silurian, 422 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metasandstone, phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Silurian, 422 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Phyllite, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Silurian, 422 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granofels, biotite-schist. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite, quartzite, mica-schist. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 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 Eliot reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the York: about 10 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Eliot; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Eliot has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 39 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Eliot normally reaches 49° and falls to 31°. The record high is 71°, in 1989; the record low 6°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.14 in, fell in 1937.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Durham, 8 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
