The Pine Grove 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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75° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 74° in 1973.
Pine Grove’s center stands about 530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 500 ft to 1,300 ft, a difference of 800 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Lick Mountain, about 1,820 ft, 11 miles west-northwest.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 384 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 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 Pine Grove reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Swatara Creek and the Susquehanna: about 120 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
60 miles of the trip are on Swatara Creek.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pine Grove; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pine Grove has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Pine Grove normally reaches 53° and falls to 34°. The record high is 72°, in 1989; the record low 17°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.69 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Lebanon 2 W, 15 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
