The Bladensburg 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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11° on Nov. 14, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1934. Next is 11° in 2019.
Bladensburg’s center stands about 960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 940 ft to 1,210 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Fox Den Knob, about 1,240 ft, 8 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Black Hand Sandstone Member of Cuyahoga Formation (sandstone, conglomerate), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 43×. 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 20 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 Bladensburg reaches the Gulf of America by way of Wakatomika Creek, the Muskingum, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,900 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 Bladensburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bladensburg has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 15 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 43 inches of water.
On November 14 Bladensburg normally reaches 52° and falls to 31°. The record high is 72°, in 1971; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.40 in, fell in 1949.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1934 at Newark Water Works, 15 miles south-southwest, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
