The Crofton 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.
9° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 12° in 1959.
Crofton’s center stands about 600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 460 ft to 720 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pilot Rock, about 900 ft, 14 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Rocks of Chesterian age, upper part (shale), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 48×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 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 Crofton reaches the Gulf of America by way of McFarland Creek, the Pond, the Green River, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,290 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 Crofton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Crofton has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. A normal year brings about 5 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 52 inches of water.
On November 14 Crofton normally reaches 59° and falls to 38°. The record high is 82°, in 1955; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.72 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Hopkinsville, 14 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.