The Mechanicsburg 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 1895. Next is 76° in 1928.
Mechanicsburg’s center stands about 1,090 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,010 ft to 1,290 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is The Knobs, about 1,270 ft, 9 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lockport Dolomite (dolostone), from the Silurian, 425 to 445 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 58×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone, shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.1 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 Mechanicsburg reaches the Gulf of America by way of Little Darby Creek, Big Darby Creek, the Scioto, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,760 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 Mechanicsburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mechanicsburg has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 44 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Mechanicsburg normally reaches 52° and falls to 33°. The record high is 75°, in 1909; the record low 5°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.30 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Urbana Wrf, 12 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
