The Lower Chanceford 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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20° on Nov. 12, 2017, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 21° in 2023.
Lower Chanceford’s center stands about 630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 130 ft to 840 ft, a difference of 710 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stony Hill, about 800 ft, 14 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Octoraro Formation (schist, phyllite), from the Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 22×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Schist, phyllite. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, quartzite. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Slate, conglomerate. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 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 Lower Chanceford reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Orson Run, Muddy Creek and the Susquehanna: about 35 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lower Chanceford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lower Chanceford has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 21 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Safe Harbor Dam, 8 miles north, 440 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
