The Smyrna 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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67° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 67° in 2022.
Smyrna’s center stands about 880 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 560 ft to 1,020 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sam Drew Mountain, about 1,520 ft, 6 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian Smyrna Mills Formation (slate, siltstone, quartzite), from the Silurian, 425 to 445 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 22×. 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, siltstone, quartzite. Age: Silurian, 425 to 445 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 459 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.
Mafic-volcanic, felsic-volcanic. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 0.8 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 Smyrna reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Duck Pond Outlet, the East Branch Mattawamkeag, the Mattawamkeag and the Penobscot: about 160 river miles.
85 miles of the trip are on the Penobscot.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Smyrna; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Smyrna has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 3° in January. About 39 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Smyrna normally reaches 42° and falls to 26°. The record high is 62°, in 1951; the record low −3°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.26 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Houlton Airport, 15 miles east-southeast, 400 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
