The Middletown 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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1° on Nov. 16, 1908, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 9° in 1933.
Middletown’s center stands about 570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 400 ft to 1,200 ft, a difference of 800 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Catoctin Mountain, about 1,900 ft, 15 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Catoctin Metabasalt, from the Proterozoic to Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 2.5 billion 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 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.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian. About 9 mi of the line.
Metabasalt. Age: Proterozoic to Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 2.5 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Proterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 2,500 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metarhyolite. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Leucocratic-granitic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.1 to 1.1 billion years old. About 1 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 Middletown reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Cone Branch, Catoctin Creek and the Potomac: about 180 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Middletown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Middletown has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Middletown normally reaches 55° and falls to 38°. The record high is 75°, in 1989; the record low 10°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 1.91 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 from the Hagerstown Area threaded record (Hagerstown Regional Airport, 21 miles north-northwest, 120 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
