The Sandwich 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 1926. Next is 70° in 2022.
Sandwich’s center stands about 800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 530 ft to 1,470 ft, a difference of 940 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Tripyramid, about 4,120 ft, 13 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Winnipesaukee Tonalite, from the Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Tonalite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite, metasedimentary. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Syenite. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Schist, granofels. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 0.4 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 Sandwich reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Bearcamp, the Ossipee and the Saco: about 90 river miles.
Lake on the way: Ossipee Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sandwich; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sandwich has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 62 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Sandwich normally reaches 48° and falls to 30°. The record high is 62°, in 2010; the record low 8°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 3.40 in, fell in 1937.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1926 at Lakeport 2, 17 miles south, 300 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
