The Vinalhaven 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
70° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1976. Next is 68° in 2022.
Vinalhaven’s center stands about 20 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 160 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Chaplain, about 550 ft, 11 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Devonian granite, from the Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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 5 mi of the line.
Greenstone. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 428 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 428 million years old. About 0.7 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.
Rain that falls on Vinalhaven runs straight into the Atlantic Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Vinalhaven; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Vinalhaven has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 69 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 56 inches of water.
On November 14 Vinalhaven normally reaches 47° and falls to 32°. The record high is 65°, in 2010; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.47 in, fell in 2018.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1976 at West Rockport 1 NNW, 19 miles west-northwest, 340 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
