The Luke 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 cloudy
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Sunny
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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.
Luke’s center stands about 1,340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 890 ft to 2,490 ft, a difference of 1,600 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wild Turkey Rock, about 3,230 ft, 11 miles west-southwest.
The section below crosses 11 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 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 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 Luke reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the North Branch Potomac and the Potomac: about 340 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 Luke; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Luke 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 Luke 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, 5 miles west-northwest, 160 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
