The Charlestown 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
78° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1936. Next is 77° in 1993.
Charlestown’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 350 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Goat Hill, about 500 ft, 12 miles north-northwest.
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 45×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss, quartz-diorite, granodiorite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Middle Cambrian, 500 to 600 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Greenstone, schist, amphibolite. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 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.
Rain that falls on Charlestown runs straight into Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Charlestown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Charlestown has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Charlestown normally reaches 56° and falls to 37°. The record high is 75°, in 1955; the record low 22°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.02 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1936 at Conowingo Dam, 12 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
