The Jordan 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.
67° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1991. Next is 64° in 2009.
Jordan’s center stands about 1,320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 940 ft to 1,630 ft, a difference of 690 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Huckleberry Mountain, about 2,590 ft, 4 miles north.
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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. 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, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 384 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.3 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 Jordan reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Little Muncy Creek, Muncy Creek, the West Branch Susquehanna and the Susquehanna: about 180 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 Jordan; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Jordan 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 Jordan 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, 13 miles north, 650 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.