The Beltsville 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
80° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 78° in 1985.
Beltsville’s center stands about 130 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 70 ft to 330 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Point Reno, about 430 ft, 11 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Potomac Group, including Raritan and Patapsco Formations, Arundel Clay, and Patuxent Formation (sand), from the Cretaceous, 66 to 145 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 40×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Biotite-schist. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartz-diorite. Age: Middle Cambrian, 500 to 520 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, 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 Beltsville reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Indian Creek, the Northeast Branch Anacostia, the Anacostia and the Potomac: about 130 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Beltsville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Beltsville has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Beltsville normally reaches 57° and falls to 37°. The record high is 77°, in 1955; the record low 18°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.98 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at Beltsville, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
