The McDonald 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.
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
9° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 10° in 1986.
McDonald’s center stands about 990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 960 ft to 1,330 ft, a difference of 370 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Quakers Knob, about 1,430 ft, 10 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Casselman Formation (shale, clastic), 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 28×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.8 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 McDonald reaches the Gulf of America by way of Robinson Run, Chartiers Creek, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,960 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 McDonald; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
McDonald has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 44 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 McDonald normally reaches 52° and falls to 35°. The record high is 76°, in 1879; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.07 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Pittsburgh Area threaded record (Pittsburgh International Airport, 8 miles north, 130 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
