The Ashley 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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77° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1950. Next is 76° in 1994.
Ashley’s center stands about 990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 950 ft to 1,040 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hulse Hill, about 1,410 ft, 13 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ohio Shale (shale, black-shale), from the Devonian, 359 to 422 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 49×. 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, black-shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Black-shale. 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. 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 Ashley reaches the Gulf of America by way of West Branch Alum Creek, Alum Creek, Big Walnut Creek, the Scioto, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,770 river miles.
Lake on the way: Williams Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ashley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ashley has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 44 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ashley normally reaches 51° and falls to 32°. The record high is 71°, in 1989; the record low 4°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1950 at Centerburg 2 SE, 18 miles east-southeast, 220 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
