The Oakfield 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 1948. Next is 67° in 2022.
Oakfield’s center stands about 550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 540 ft to 1,350 ft, a difference of 810 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Long Mountain, about 1,920 ft, 15 miles west.
The section below crosses 8 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.
Slate, siltstone, quartzite. Age: Silurian, 425 to 445 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Quartzite, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Early Cambrian, 521 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartz-diorite. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 459 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. 2 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 Oakfield reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the East Branch Mattawamkeag, the Mattawamkeag and the Penobscot: about 160 river miles.
85 miles of the trip are on the Penobscot.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Oakfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Oakfield has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. About 39 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Oakfield normally reaches 42° and falls to 26°. The record high is 62°, in 1951; the record low −3°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.26 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Houlton Airport, 17 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
