The Port William 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.
6° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1915. Next is 7° in 1933.
Port William’s center stands about 1,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 980 ft to 1,050 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cedarville, Springfield, Euphemia, and Laurel Dolomites; Massie Shale, Undivided (dolostone), from the Silurian, 422 to 434 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 62×. 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, 422 to 434 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 454 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 454 million years old. About 0.9 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 Port William reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Anderson Fork, Caesar Creek, the Little Miami, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,560 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 Port William; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Port William has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Port William normally reaches 52° and falls to 34°. The record high is 77°, in 1931; the record low 9°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.75 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1915 from the Wilmington Area threaded record (Wilmington Air Park, 8 miles south). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.