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 2,110 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,430 ft to 2,220 ft, a difference of 790 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lost Mountain, about 2,650 ft, 13 miles east.
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 5 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.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Shale, clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.5 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 Killbuck Run, Beaverdam Run, Clearfield Creek, the West Branch Susquehanna and the Susquehanna: about 360 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
170 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, 4 miles east-southeast, 590 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
