The Newcastle 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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67° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1965. Next is 66° in 2022.
Newcastle’s center stands about 40 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 260 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Beech Hill, about 560 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 52×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Slate. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Syenite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 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 Newcastle reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Damariscotta: about 17 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Newcastle; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Newcastle has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 79 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 Newcastle normally reaches 46° and falls to 33°. The record high is 62°, in 1973; the record low 11°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.03 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1965 at Newcastle, here, 170 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
