The Laurel 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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80° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1925. Next is 79° in 1955.
Laurel’s center stands about 740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 690 ft to 1,040 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Battle Point, about 1,070 ft, 11 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dillsboro Formation (limestone, shale), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 40×. 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: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 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.
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 Laurel reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Whitewater, the Great Miami, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,510 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Laurel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Laurel has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 18 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Laurel normally reaches 55° and falls to 33°. The record high is 79°, in 1955; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.55 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1925 at Brookville, 11 miles east-southeast, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
