The Lancaster 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.
Lancaster’s center stands about 880 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 1,140 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jacobs Ladder, about 1,250 ft, 5 miles south-southwest.
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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 44×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 10 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 Lancaster reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Hocking, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,830 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 Lancaster; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lancaster 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 Lancaster 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, 5 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
