The Germantown 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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16° on Nov. 16, 1996, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1993. Next is 18° in 2017.
Germantown’s center stands about 470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 290 ft to 600 ft, a difference of 310 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sugar Loaf Mountain, about 1,270 ft, 9 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ijamsville Formation and Marburg Schist (phyllite), from the Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old.
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 25×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Muscovite-schist. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Phyllite, metasiltstone. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Biotite-schist. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 0.5 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 Germantown reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Gunners Branch, Great Seneca Creek, Seneca Creek and the Potomac: about 150 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Germantown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Germantown has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 31 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Germantown normally reaches 54° and falls to 37°. The record high is 74°, in 1993; the record low 22°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.90 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1993 at Damascus 3 SSW, 6 miles north-northeast, 230 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
