The Oil Creek 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.
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1954. Next is 71° in 1954.
Oil Creek’s center stands about 1,560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,180 ft to 1,680 ft, a difference of 500 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cole Hill, about 1,980 ft, 15 miles east-northeast.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 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 Oil Creek reaches the Gulf of America by way of Thompson Creek, Oil Creek, the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,100 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 Oil Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Oil Creek has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in February. A normal year brings about 89 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Oil Creek normally reaches 49° and falls to 29°. The record high is 69°, in 1989; the record low 11°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.42 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1954 at Titusville Water Works, 2 miles south-southwest, 340 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
