The Willimantic 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.
73° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1973. Next is 67° in 2022.
Willimantic’s center stands about 450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 370 ft to 850 ft, a difference of 480 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Elephant Mountain, about 2,630 ft, 14 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Devonian - Silurian Madrid Formation (quartzite, calc-silicate-rock), from the Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 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 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Schist. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Quartzite, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Diorite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Early Devonian, 410 to 414 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. 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 Willimantic reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Big Wilson Stream, the Sebec, the Piscataquis and the Penobscot: about 110 river miles.
Lake on the way: Sebec Lake.
60 miles of the trip are on the Penobscot.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Willimantic; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Willimantic has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 4° in January. A normal year brings about 77 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Willimantic normally reaches 45° and falls to 26°. The record high is 63°, in 2010; the record low 4°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.14 in, fell in 2018.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1973 at Dover-Foxcroft Wwtp, 14 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.