The Westernport 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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81° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 79° in 2011.
Westernport’s center stands about 1,020 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 2,460 ft, a difference of 1,580 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wild Turkey Rock, about 3,230 ft, 12 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Allegheny Formation and Pottsville Formation (sandstone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 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 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 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.
Shale, mudstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 0.9 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 Westernport reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Georges Creek, 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 Westernport; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Westernport has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 34 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Keyser 2 SSW, 5 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
