The Cumberland 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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79° on Nov. 15, 2011, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1974. Next is 78° in 2020.
Cumberland’s center stands about 650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 590 ft to 1,680 ft, a difference of 1,090 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sampson Rock, about 2,940 ft, 10 miles west-northwest.
The section below crosses 10 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. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Claystone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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. 4 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 Cumberland reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Wills Creek, the North Branch Potomac and the Potomac: about 310 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cumberland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cumberland 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 Cumberland 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, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
