The Franklin 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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79° on Nov. 16, 1990, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 79° in 2020.
Franklin’s center stands about 1,290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 940 ft to 1,450 ft, a difference of 510 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Fort Knob, about 1,650 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
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 27×. 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, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 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 Franklin reaches the Gulf of America by way of Smith Creek, South Fork Tenmile Creek, Tenmile Creek, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,030 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 Franklin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Franklin has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 30 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 43 inches of water.
On November 14 Franklin normally reaches 54° and falls to 30°. The record high is 75°, in 1989; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.54 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Waynesburg 1 E, 2 miles north-northeast, 350 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
