The Lancaster 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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77° on Nov. 14, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1979. Next is 77° in 2020.
Lancaster’s center stands about 1,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 820 ft to 1,050 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pine Knob, about 1,340 ft, 13 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ashlock Formation, Grant Lake and Calloway Creek Limestones, and Fairview Formation, undivided, from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 25×. 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: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Lancaster reaches the Gulf of America by way of White Oak Creek, the Dix, the Kentucky, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,570 river miles.
Lake on the way: Herrington Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lancaster; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lancaster has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 51 inches of water.
On November 14 Lancaster normally reaches 59° and falls to 37°. The record high is 77°, in 1993; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.35 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1979 at Crab Orchard 6 N, 12 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
