The North Franklin 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.
85° on Nov. 15, 1956, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1878. Next is 78° in 1958.
North Franklin’s center stands about 1,310 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,020 ft to 1,400 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mosier Hill, about 1,510 ft, 8 miles west-southwest.
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 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.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 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 North Franklin reaches the Gulf of America by way of Chartiers Creek, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,980 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 North Franklin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
North Franklin has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. About 38 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 North Franklin normally reaches 52° and falls to 36°. The record high is 74°, in 1989; the record low 10°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 1.10 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1878 from the Wheeling Area threaded record (Wheeling Ohio County Airport, 21 miles west, 120 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.