The Pownal 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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Partly cloudy; warmer
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71° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1995. Next is 71° in 2022.
Pownal’s center stands about 470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 120 ft to 390 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Cat Mountain, about 890 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Carboniferous alkali feldspar granite (muscovite accessory, abundant sedimentary inclusions), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 31×. 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: Carboniferous, 299 to 359 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 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.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 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 Pownal reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Thoits Branch, East Branch Chandler Brook, Chandler Brook and the Royal: about 17 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pownal; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pownal has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 84 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Pownal normally reaches 47° and falls to 32°. The record high is 63°, in 2011; the record low 12°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 4.20 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1995 at Gray, 4 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
