The Sharpsburg 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 sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
81° on Nov. 11, 1927, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 81° in 1999.
Sharpsburg’s center stands about 1,280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,150 ft to 1,290 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Shawnee Group (limestone, shale), from the Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Shale, mudstone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, mudstone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 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.
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 Sharpsburg reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Middle Fork One Hundred and Two, the One Hundred and Two, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,730 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sharpsburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sharpsburg has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 28 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Sharpsburg normally reaches 49° and falls to 28°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low −4°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.98 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Corning, 14 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
