The Lafayette 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
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
69° on Nov. 11, 2012, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1957. Next is 66° in 2014.
Lafayette’s center stands about 2,150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,640 ft to 2,210 ft, a difference of 570 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blacksnake Mountain, about 2,370 ft, 13 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pottsville Formation (sandstone, conglomerate), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 19×. 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, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. 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 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.5 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 Lafayette reaches the Gulf of America by way of Lewis Run, East Branch Tunungwant Creek, Tunungwant Creek, the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,210 river miles.
Lake on the way: Allegheny Reservoir.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lafayette; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lafayette has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lafayette normally reaches 46° and falls to 30°. The record high is 64°, in 1989; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1957 at Bradford Regional Airport, 2 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
