The Sidney 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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71° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 71° in 2022.
Sidney’s center stands about 180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 530 ft, a difference of 530 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is McGaffey Mountain, about 1,290 ft, 14 miles northwest.
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 32×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Schist, slate. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 434 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Marble, calc-silicate-rock, metasedimentary. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 0.4 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 Sidney reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Fields Brook, Goff Brook and the Kennebec: about 55 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sidney; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sidney has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Sidney normally reaches 46° and falls to 31°. The record high is 63°, in 2011; the record low 10°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.41 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Augusta State Airport, 7 miles south-southwest, 170 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
