The Bel Air 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
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
79° on Nov. 15, 2011, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1974. Next is 78° in 2020.
Bel Air’s center stands about 710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 650 ft to 2,760 ft, a difference of 2,110 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Savage Mountain, about 2,980 ft, 13 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Hamilton Group (including Mahantango Formation and Marcellus Shale), and including Tioga Metabentontite Bed, and Needmore Shale, from the Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 14 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Claystone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Claystone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 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. 8 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 Bel Air reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the North Branch Potomac and the Potomac: about 330 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bel Air; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bel Air has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 29 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Bel Air normally reaches 54° and falls to 34°. The record high is 71°, in 1993; the record low 13°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.72 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1974 at Cumberland 2, 7 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
