The Mays Chapel 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.
82° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1950. Next is 80° in 1973.
Mays Chapel’s center stands about 510 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 250 ft to 660 ft, a difference of 410 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Spook Hill, about 850 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wissahickon Formation; Lower Pelitic Schist (biotite-schist), from the Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 27×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Biotite-schist. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian. About 5 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke, muscovite-schist. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 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 Mays Chapel reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Roland Run, the Jones Falls and the Patapsco: about 25 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mays Chapel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mays Chapel has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 44 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Mays Chapel normally reaches 58° and falls to 43°. The record high is 78°, in 1989; the record low 21°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.46 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1950 from the Baltimore Downtown Area threaded record (Maryland Science Center, 11 miles south, 490 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.