The Kitzmiller 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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8° on Nov. 14, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1945. Next is 12° in 1967.
Kitzmiller’s center stands about 1,660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,450 ft to 2,740 ft, a difference of 1,290 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pigeonroost, about 3,530 ft, 14 miles south.
The section below crosses 12 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.
Claystone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 422 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 6 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 Kitzmiller reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the North Branch Potomac and the Potomac: about 360 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 Kitzmiller; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kitzmiller has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. About 41 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Kitzmiller normally reaches 51° and falls to 32°. The record high is 70°, in 1955; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.75 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1945 at Savage River Dam, 9 miles north-northeast, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
