The Florence 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.
6° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1991. Next is 15° in 2005.
Florence’s center stands about 580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 420 ft to 660 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Calvert Hill, about 740 ft, 5 miles west-southwest.
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 51×. 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. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, coal. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 315 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Early Mississippian, 347 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 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 Florence reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,240 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Florence; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Florence has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1991 at Pittsfield No 2, 10 miles west, 100 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.