The Stoneham 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
77° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1959. Next is 72° in 2022.
Stoneham’s center stands about 1,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 390 ft to 1,820 ft, a difference of 1,430 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Hight, about 4,660 ft, 15 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Devonian tonalite, from the Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. 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: Carboniferous, 299 to 359 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Tonalite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Migmatite. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Pelitic-schist, granofels. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Metasandstone. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Stoneham reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Beaver Brook, Great Brook, the Kezar Outlet, the Old Course Saco and the Saco: about 100 river miles.
80 miles of the trip are on the Saco.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Stoneham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Stoneham has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 84 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Stoneham normally reaches 47° and falls to 28°. The record high is 63°, in 1985; the record low 8°, in 1971. The most rain on this date, 0.85 in, fell in 2018.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1959 at North Conway, 19 miles southwest, 490 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
