The Mount Pleasant 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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14° on Nov. 14, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1972. Next is 15° in 1996.
Mount Pleasant’s center stands about 610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 490 ft to 640 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Hill, about 1,630 ft, 15 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows New Oxford Formation (arkose), from the Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 34×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone-mudstone, shale. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Age: Precambrian. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite, schist. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 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. 3 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 Mount Pleasant reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Brush Run, Swift Run, Conewago Creek and the Susquehanna: about 110 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
50 miles of the trip are on Conewago Creek.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mount Pleasant; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mount Pleasant has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 27 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Mount Pleasant normally reaches 54° and falls to 35°. The record high is 66°, in 1973; the record low 14°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.28 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1972 at Biglerville, 11 miles northwest, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
