The Swanton 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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76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 74° in 1911.
Swanton’s center stands about 2,380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,150 ft to 3,120 ft, a difference of 970 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wild Turkey Rock, about 3,230 ft, 3 miles south-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 10×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 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. 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 Swanton reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of North Fork Crabtree Creek, Crabtree Creek, the Savage, 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 Swanton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Swanton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 105 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 51 inches of water.
On November 14 Swanton normally reaches 52° and falls to 30°. The record high is 72°, in 1993; the record low 3°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Oakland 1 SE, 10 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
