The Rockland 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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70° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1976. Next is 68° in 2022.
Rockland’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 570 ft, a difference of 570 ft: hilly country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Megunticook, about 1,370 ft, 10 miles north-northeast.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 25×. 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, schist, quartzite. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 450 to 470 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Schist, granulite. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 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. 3 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 Rockland reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Meadow Brook, the Mill and the Saint George: about 15 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rockland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rockland has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 69 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 56 inches of water.
On November 14 Rockland normally reaches 47° and falls to 32°. The record high is 65°, in 2010; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.47 in, fell in 2018.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1976 at West Rockport 1 NNW, 6 miles north-northwest, 330 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
