The Halifax 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.
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
76° on Nov. 15, 1973, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1888. Next is 76° in 1993.
Halifax’s center stands about 470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 350 ft to 920 ft, a difference of 570 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Broad Mountain, about 1,790 ft, 9 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sherman Creek Member of Catskill Formation (siltstone, mudstone), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Siltstone, mudstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 384 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Halifax reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Susquehanna: about 95 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
50 miles of the trip are on the Susquehanna.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Halifax; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Halifax has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 30 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Halifax normally reaches 54° and falls to 36°. The record high is 74°, in 1989; the record low 19°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.74 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1888 from the Middletown-Harrisburg Area threaded record (Middletown Harrisburg Int'L Airport, 20 miles south-southeast, 170 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
