The Thorndike 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 1895. Next is 71° in 2022.
Thorndike’s center stands about 280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 230 ft to 640 ft, a difference of 410 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Harris, about 1,260 ft, 9 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian - Ordovician Vassalboro Formation (sandstone), from the Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 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.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Slate. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, metavolcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Ordovician to Devonian, 359 to 487 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. 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 Thorndike reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Halfmoon Stream, the Sandy Stream, the Twentyfive Mile Stream, the Sebasticook and the Kennebec: about 100 river miles.
60 miles of the trip are on the Kennebec.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Thorndike; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Thorndike has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. About 43 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Thorndike normally reaches 47° and falls to 29°. The record high is 66°, in 1930; the record low 7°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.01 in, fell in 1904.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Waterville Treatment Plt, 19 miles west, 220 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
