The Forks 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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67° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1991. Next is 64° in 2009.
Forks’s center stands about 1,980 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,050 ft to 2,010 ft, a difference of 960 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Huckleberry Mountain, about 2,590 ft, 13 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Burgoon Sandstone, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 14×. 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, siltstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.8 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 Forks reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Big Run, Loyalsock Creek, the West Branch Susquehanna and the Susquehanna: about 210 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
85 miles of the trip are on the Susquehanna.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Forks; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Forks has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 70 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 53 inches of water.
On November 14 Forks normally reaches 45° and falls to 29°. The record high is 58°, in 2010; the record low 12°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.57 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1991 at Laporte, 6 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
