The Smithfield 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1993. Next is 67° in 2002.
Smithfield’s center stands about 250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 250 ft to 610 ft, a difference of 360 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is McGaffey Mountain, about 1,290 ft, 9 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 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.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 434 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 0.6 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 Smithfield reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Clark Brook, the The Serpentine, the Great Meadow Stream, the Belgrade Stream and the Kennebec: about 110 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 Smithfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Smithfield 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, 8 miles west, 230 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
