The Spencer 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.
Chance of showers
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76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 74° in 1902.
Spencer’s center stands about 990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 970 ft to 1,680 ft, a difference of 710 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Irish Hill, about 2,020 ft, 9 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Walton Formation (shale, sandstone, conglomerate), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 20×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 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.
A raindrop that lands in Spencer reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Bliven Creek, Catatonk Creek, Owego Creek and the Susquehanna: about 330 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
270 miles of the trip are on the Susquehanna.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Spencer; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Spencer has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Spencer normally reaches 50° and falls to 30°. The record high is 74°, in 1902; the record low 7°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 0.94 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Waverly, 14 miles south, 190 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
