The Mount Vernon 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1993. Next is 67° in 2002.
Mount Vernon’s center stands about 350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 290 ft to 1,160 ft, a difference of 870 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is McGaffey Mountain, about 1,290 ft, 2 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian Smalls Falls Formation (shale, sandstone), from the Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 434 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Quartzite, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Mount Vernon reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Moose Pond Stream, the Ingham Stream, the Belgrade Stream and the Kennebec: about 95 river miles.
Lake on the way: Messalonskee Lake.
60 miles of the trip are on the Kennebec.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mount Vernon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mount Vernon has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. A normal year brings about 86 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1993 at New Sharon, 9 miles north, 130 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
