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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14° on Nov. 14, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1972. Next is 15° in 1996.
Franklin’s center stands about 1,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 1,780 ft, a difference of 1,140 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Snowy Mountain, about 2,090 ft, 8 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Metarhyolite, from the Precambrian.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone-mudstone, shale. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Precambrian. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. 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. 3 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 Franklin reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Marsh Creek, the Monocacy and the Potomac: about 240 river miles.
160 miles of the trip are on the Potomac.
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 hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 27 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Franklin normally reaches 54° and falls to 35°. The record high is 66°, in 1973; the record low 14°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.28 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1972 at Biglerville, 7 miles east-northeast, 320 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
