The Machias 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.
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
3.14 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1896. The next wettest, 2.23 inches, fell in 1965.
Machias’s center stands about 1,690 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,600 ft to 2,040 ft, a difference of 440 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Poverty Hill, about 2,370 ft, 13 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Machias Formation (shale, siltstone, sandstone), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 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.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 6 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.
Machias straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the northeast side runs to Lake Erie; most of the rest goes to the Gulf of America.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches the Gulf of America by way of Johnson Creek, Olean Creek, the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,230 river miles. One that lands on the northeast side reaches Lake Erie by way of the Lime Lake Outlet, Elton Creek and Cattaraugus Creek: about 60 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Allegheny Reservoir.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Machias; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Machias has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 109 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Machias normally reaches 47° and falls to 29°. The record high is 66°, in 1989; the record low −4°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.04 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Franklinville, 6 miles south-southeast, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
