The Lehigh 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
72° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1958. Next is 71° in 2012.
Lehigh’s center stands about 1,490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 780 ft to 1,770 ft, a difference of 990 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pimple Hill, about 2,220 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pocono Formation (sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 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. 7 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 Lehigh reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Lehigh and the Delaware: about 210 river miles.
150 miles of the trip are on the Delaware.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lehigh; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lehigh has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. About 49 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lehigh normally reaches 48° and falls to 30°. The record high is 65°, in 1964; the record low 10°, in 1997. The most rain on this date, 0.91 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1958 at Francis E Walter Dam, 11 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
