The Wakefield 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1953. Next is 73° in 2022.
Wakefield’s center stands about 680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 530 ft to 1,030 ft, a difference of 500 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Green Mountain, about 1,920 ft, 14 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower part of Rangeley Formation (metaclastic), from the Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 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.
Metaclastic. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mudstone, limestone. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Calc-silicate-rock. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 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. 3 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 Wakefield reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Scribner Brook, the Salmon Falls and the Piscataqua: about 55 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wakefield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wakefield has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Wakefield normally reaches 49° and falls to 27°. The record high is 71°, in 1989; the record low 9°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.60 in, fell in 2018.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1953 at Sanford 2 NNW, 15 miles east-southeast, 390 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
