The Cambridge 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.
14° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1873. Next is 15° in 1959.
Cambridge’s center stands about 1,340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,130 ft to 1,500 ft, a difference of 370 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pleasant Hill, about 1,620 ft, 6 miles east.
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 32×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 Cambridge reaches the Gulf of America by way of French Creek, the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,120 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 Cambridge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cambridge has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 104 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 43 inches of water.
On November 14 Cambridge normally reaches 51° and falls to 37°. The record high is 73°, in 1994; the record low 18°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.27 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1873 from the Erie Area threaded record (Erie International Airport, 19 miles north-northwest, 610 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.