The Baltimore 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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5° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 10° in 1996.
Baltimore’s center stands about 860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 830 ft to 970 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jacobs Ladder, about 1,250 ft, 14 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sunbury Shale, Berea Sandstone, and Bedford Shale, Undivided (shale, sandstone), from the Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 50×. 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, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 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.
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 Baltimore reaches the Gulf of America by way of PawPaw Creek, Walnut Creek, the Scioto, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,730 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Baltimore; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Baltimore has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Baltimore normally reaches 53° and falls to 32°. The record high is 73°, in 2011; the record low 15°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.86 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Lancaster Fairfield County Airport, 7 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
