The Lower Towamensing 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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19° on Nov. 11, 2017, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1934. Next is 19° in 2019.
Lower Towamensing’s center stands about 560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 400 ft to 1,440 ft, a difference of 1,040 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pimple Hill, about 2,220 ft, 15 miles north-northeast.
The section below crosses 14 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. 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, slate. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 384 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 8 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 Towamensing reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Aquashicola Creek, the Lehigh and the Delaware: about 190 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 Lower Towamensing; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lower Towamensing has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 27 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 52 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1934 at Lehighton 1 SSW, 7 miles west, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
