The Gray 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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71° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1995. Next is 71° in 2022.
Gray’s center stands about 300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 140 ft to 540 ft, a difference of 400 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rattlesnake Mountain, about 1,040 ft, 9 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Carboniferous alkali feldspar granite (muscovite accessory mineral), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 359 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 22×. 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 17 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.3 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 Gray reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Thayer Brook, the Pleasant and the Presumpscot: about 35 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gray; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gray has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 84 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Gray normally reaches 47° and falls to 32°. The record high is 63°, in 2011; the record low 12°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 4.20 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1995 at Gray, 4 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
