Maine Geography & Climate

Maine is the northeasternmost state, bordering New Hampshire and, for a longer distance, the Canadian provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick.

Its defining feature is the coast, and specifically how broken it is. Glaciers drowned a landscape of ridges and valleys, leaving long peninsulas, deep bays and several thousand islands. That is why the shoreline measures around 3,500 miles while the state is only about 230 miles wide at the coast.

The southern beaches are the exception: a stretch of genuine sand before the granite begins. North of Portland the shore is rock, and remains so all the way to the Canadian border.

Inland, Maine is overwhelmingly forest — the most heavily forested state in the country — with lakes, working timberland and few roads. It rises in the north-centre to Mount Katahdin, the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.

Maine has a humid continental climate and a genuinely short warm season. July and August are pleasant rather than hot on the coast, and the sea stays cold — comfortable swimming is confined to the southern beaches, and even there it is brisk.

Winters are long and snowy, harder inland than on the coast, where the ocean moderates both extremes. Snow cover in the mountains is reliable enough to support a real ski industry.

Fog is a coastal feature in early summer and can sit for days, which matters if a trip is built around views or boat trips.

Autumn is the most settled season: clear, dry and cool, with foliage peaking in the north in late September and on the coast through October.