The Holden 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.
Holden’s center stands about 210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 90 ft to 710 ft, a difference of 620 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Mountain, about 1,260 ft, 7 miles south-southeast.
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 4 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.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Ordovician to Devonian, 359 to 487 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granite. 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 Holden reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Eaton Brook and the Penobscot: about 30 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Holden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Holden 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 Holden 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, 8 miles west-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
