The Atlas 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1926. Next is 72° in 1973.
Atlas’s center stands about 1,140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 970 ft to 1,720 ft, a difference of 750 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Catawissa Mountain, about 1,960 ft, 10 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Llewellyn Formation (sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 14×. 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: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Atlas reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Shamokin Creek and the Susquehanna: about 160 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
80 miles of the trip are on the Susquehanna.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Atlas; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Atlas has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 29 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Atlas normally reaches 51° and falls to 32°. The record high is 70°, in 1964; the record low 18°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.97 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1926 at Sunbury, 19 miles west-northwest, 560 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
