The Lower Oxford 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2024, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1978. Next is 72° in 1993.
Lower Oxford’s center stands about 480 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 280 ft to 610 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gap Hill, about 880 ft, 12 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Peters Creek Schist (mica-schist, quartzite), from the Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 29×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mica-schist. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, quartzite. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Schist, phyllite. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss, quartz-diorite, granodiorite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Middle Cambrian, 500 to 600 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 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 Lower Oxford reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Leech Run, East Branch Octoraro Creek, Octoraro Creek and the Susquehanna: about 35 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lower Oxford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lower Oxford has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 18 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Lower Oxford normally reaches 54° and falls to 33°. The record high is 72°, in 1993; the record low 15°, in 2022. The most rain on this date, 0.92 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1978 at Octoraro Lake, 3 miles west-southwest, 220 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
