The Steep Falls 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 sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
73° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1994. Next is 70° in 2022.
Steep Falls’s center stands about 310 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 230 ft to 490 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bill Merrill Mountain, about 1,620 ft, 11 miles west-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 13×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Mudstone, limestone. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Schist, slate. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 359 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.
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 Steep Falls reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Tucker Brook and the Saco: about 40 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Steep Falls; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Steep Falls has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 81 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 52 inches of water.
On November 14 Steep Falls normally reaches 46° and falls to 26°. The record high is 62°, in 2010; the record low 7°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.13 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1994 at Hollis, 10 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
