The Effingham 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2002, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 74° in 2022.
Effingham’s center stands about 610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 390 ft to 1,650 ft, a difference of 1,260 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Shaw, about 2,970 ft, 14 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Two-mica granite of the Sebago batholith and Effingham pluton of eastern New Hampshire, from the Carboniferous, 299 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 17×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Metaclastic. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Trondhjemite, pegmatite. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 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.
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 Effingham reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Wilkinson Brook, the Pine River, the Ossipee and the Saco: about 85 river miles.
Lake on the way: Ossipee Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Effingham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Effingham has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Effingham normally reaches 47° and falls to 26°. The record high is 63°, in 2016; the record low 4°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.06 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Fryeburg Eastern Slopes Regl Airport, 16 miles north, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
