The Cambridge 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
13° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1872. Next is 15° in 1986.
Cambridge’s center stands about 590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 490 ft to 700 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Spickert Knob, about 970 ft, 15 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sellersburg and Jeffersonville Limestones, undivided, from the Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 384 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 55×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 384 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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. 3 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Cambridge reaches the Gulf of America by way of Weicher Creek, Middle Fork Beargrass Creek, Beargrass Creek, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,350 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 Cambridge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cambridge has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. A normal year brings about 13 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Cambridge normally reaches 58° and falls to 40°. The record high is 79°, in 1902; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.44 in, fell in 1929.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1872 from the Louisville Area threaded record (Louisville International Airport, 7 miles west-southwest, 110 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
