The West Forks 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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73° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 65° in 2002.
West Forks’s center stands about 1,220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 920 ft to 1,470 ft, a difference of 550 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Coburn Mountain, about 3,700 ft, 7 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cambrian Hurricane Mountain Formation (melange), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mudstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Melange. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Early Devonian, 410 to 414 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartz-monzonite. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 6 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 West Forks reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Durgin Brook and the Kennebec: about 150 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of West Forks; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Forks has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 0° in January. A normal year brings about 107 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 West Forks normally reaches 42° and falls to 23°. The record high is 58°, in 2010; the record low −4°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.67 in, fell in 1937.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Jackman, 19 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
