The Bel Air South 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. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1919. Next is 77° in 1955.
Bel Air South’s center stands about 230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 90 ft to 430 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Ararat, about 450 ft, 13 miles east-northeast.
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 31×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Biotite-schist. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metagabbro, amphibolite. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss, quartz-diorite, granodiorite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Middle Cambrian, 500 to 600 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, amphibolite, paragneiss. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gabbro. Age: Proterozoic to Paleozoic, 252 to 2,500 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. 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 Bel Air South reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Bynum Run, Bush Creek and the Bush: about 18 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bel Air South; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bel Air South has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bel Air South normally reaches 56° and falls to 37°. The record high is 77°, in 1955; the record low 21°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.83 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1919 at Aberdeen Phillips Field, 8 miles east-southeast, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
