The Driftwood 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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76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1969. Next is 72° in 1975.
Driftwood’s center stands about 870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 2,170 ft, a difference of 1,370 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Old Round Top, about 2,360 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Catskill Formation (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 13×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.1 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 Driftwood reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Driftwood Branch Sinnemahoning Creek, Bennett Branch Sinnemahoning Creek, Sinnemahoning Creek, the West Branch Susquehanna and the Susquehanna: about 260 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
110 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 Driftwood; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Driftwood has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 39 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 43 inches of water.
On November 14 Driftwood normally reaches 49° and falls to 29°. The record high is 67°, in 2009; the record low 13°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.77 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1969 at Stevenson Dam, 7 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
