The Rome 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
74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1993. Next is 67° in 2002.
Rome’s center stands about 340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 240 ft to 880 ft, a difference of 640 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is McGaffey Mountain, about 1,290 ft, 6 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Devonian granite, from the Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old.
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 19×. 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: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 434 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Schist, slate. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Metasandstone. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Quartzite, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 0.9 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 Rome reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Rome Trout Brook, the Belgrade Stream and the Kennebec: about 100 river miles.
Lake on the way: Messalonskee Lake.
60 miles of the trip are on the Kennebec.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rome; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rome has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. A normal year brings about 86 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1993 at New Sharon, 7 miles west-northwest, 140 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
