The Gorman 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
75° on Nov. 11, 1938, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is 74° in 1993.
Gorman’s center stands about 2,620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,340 ft to 3,070 ft, a difference of 730 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Snowy Point, about 4,060 ft, 9 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Conemaugh Formation (claystone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 12×. 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, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Claystone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 0.9 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 Gorman reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Nydegger Run, the North Branch Potomac and the Potomac: about 380 river miles.
290 miles of the trip are on the Potomac.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gorman; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gorman has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 118 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 53 inches of water.
On November 14 Gorman normally reaches 49° and falls to 27°. The record high is 74°, in 1993; the record low 4°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.03 in, fell in 1929.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Bayard, here, 210 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
