The Freedom 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
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Partly cloudy
74° on Nov. 11, 2002, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 74° in 2022.
Freedom’s center stands about 490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 390 ft to 1,440 ft, a difference of 1,050 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Shaw, about 2,970 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
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 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. 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 9 mi of the line.
Mudstone, limestone. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Tonalite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 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. 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 Freedom reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Square Brook, the Ossipee and the Saco: about 70 river miles.
Lake on the way: Ossipee Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Freedom; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Freedom 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 Freedom 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, 13 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
