The Chest 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1982. Next is 72° in 1994.
Chest’s center stands about 1,790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,340 ft to 1,980 ft, a difference of 640 ft: hilly country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glenshaw Formation (shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 18×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale, clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.4 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 Chest reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Pine Run, Chest Creek, the West Branch Susquehanna and the Susquehanna: about 350 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
210 miles of the trip are on the West Branch Susquehanna.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Chest; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Chest has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 50 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Chest normally reaches 50° and falls to 30°. The record high is 65°, in 2010; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.61 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1982 at Prince Gallitzin State Park, 10 miles south-southeast, 270 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
