The Betterton 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.
Betterton’s center stands about 90 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 140 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Felix, about 450 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upland Deposits (Eastern Shore) (gravel, sand), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 0.4 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.
Rain that falls on Betterton runs straight into Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Betterton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Betterton 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 Betterton 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, 9 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
