The Clairton 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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13° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1935. Next is 17° in 2017.
Clairton’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 1,230 ft, a difference of 510 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sheppler Hill, about 1,430 ft, 11 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Casselman Formation (shale, clastic), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Limestone, shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 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 Clairton reaches the Gulf of America by way of Peters Creek, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,970 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 Clairton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Clairton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. About 41 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Clairton normally reaches 52° and falls to 36°. The record high is 70°, in 2011; the record low 18°, in 1942. The most rain on this date, 0.54 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1935 at Pittsburgh Allegheny County Airport, 4 miles north-northwest, 320 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
