The Shaft 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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73° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1972. Next is 73° in 2020.
Shaft’s center stands about 1,780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,710 ft to 2,870 ft, a difference of 1,160 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Savage Mountain, about 2,980 ft, 10 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Monongahela Formation (claystone, limestone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 15 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, limestone. 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.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Claystone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 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. 9 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 Shaft reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Georges Creek, 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 Shaft; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Shaft has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 72 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Shaft normally reaches 49° and falls to 32°. The record high is 64°, in 2005; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.69 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1972 at Frostburg 2, 3 miles north, 390 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
