The Black 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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73° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1972. Next is 73° in 2020.
Black’s center stands about 2,340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,820 ft to 2,770 ft, a difference of 950 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Davis, about 3,220 ft, 7 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Allegheny Formation (sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 16×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 0.7 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 Black reaches the Gulf of America by way of Rhoades Creek, the Casselman, the Youghiogheny, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,060 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Black; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Black has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 72 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Black normally reaches 49° and falls to 32°. The record high is 64°, in 2005; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.69 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1972 at Frostburg 2, 19 miles southeast, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
