The Orono 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.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
68° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1925. Next is 68° in 2022.
Orono’s center stands about 150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 110 ft to 320 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Peaked Mountain, about 1,140 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian - Ordovician Vassalboro Formation (sandstone), from the Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 20×. 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. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Ordovician to Devonian, 359 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granite. 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 Orono reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Pushaw Lake, the Pushaw Stream and the Penobscot: about 50 river miles.
Lake on the way: Pushaw Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Orono; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Orono 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 Orono 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, 7 miles southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
