The Luzerne 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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79° on Nov. 16, 1990, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 79° in 2020.
Luzerne’s center stands about 790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 750 ft to 1,230 ft, a difference of 480 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Turkey Knob, about 1,480 ft, 11 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Monongahela Group (limestone, shale, sandstone), 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 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.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 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.
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 Luzerne reaches the Gulf of America by way of Rush Run, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,010 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Luzerne; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Luzerne has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 30 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 43 inches of water.
On November 14 Luzerne normally reaches 54° and falls to 30°. The record high is 75°, in 1989; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.54 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Waynesburg 1 E, 13 miles west-southwest, 150 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
