The Fortescue 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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80° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1943. Next is 76° in 1955.
Fortescue’s center stands barely above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 30 ft, a difference of 30 ft: nearly flat ground. Open water lies within three miles.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Middle Miocene, 12 to 14 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Middle Miocene, 12 to 14 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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.
Rain that falls on Fortescue runs straight into Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fortescue; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fortescue has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. About 43 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fortescue normally reaches 57° and falls to 35°. The record high is 74°, in 1993; the record low 18°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.31 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1943 at Millville Municipal Airport, 10 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
