The Churchtown 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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16° on Nov. 11, 2017, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1992. Next is 19° in 1996.
Churchtown’s center stands about 540 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 400 ft to 1,020 ft, a difference of 620 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cushion Peak, about 1,140 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 22×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite, schist. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian. 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. 7 smaller units 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 Churchtown reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Little Conestoga, the Conestoga and the Susquehanna: about 90 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
50 miles of the trip are on the Conestoga.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Churchtown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Churchtown has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 34 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Churchtown normally reaches 54° and falls to 37°. The record high is 70°, in 1993; the record low 25°, in 2004. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1992 at New Holland 2 SE, 7 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
