The North Wales 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
77° on Nov. 12, 2015, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 76° in 2020.
North Wales’s center stands about 410 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 250 ft to 480 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rock Hill, about 860 ft, 14 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lockatong Formation (argillite), from the Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 32×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Argillite. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Schist, phyllite. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 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. 2 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 North Wales reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Wissahickon Creek, the Schuylkill and the Delaware: about 95 river miles.
60 miles of the trip are on the Delaware.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of North Wales; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
North Wales has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 25 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 51 inches of water.
On November 14 North Wales normally reaches 57° and falls to 35°. The record high is 74°, in 1955; the record low 19°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 2020.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Norristown, 8 miles south-southwest, 350 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
