The Pottstown 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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78° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 77° in 1973.
Pottstown’s center stands about 190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 120 ft to 510 ft, a difference of 390 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Church Hill, about 1,120 ft, 13 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Brunswick Formation (mudstone), 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 21×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mudstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian. About 2 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite, sandstone. 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 Pottstown reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Manatawny Creek, the Schuylkill and the Delaware: about 110 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 Pottstown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pottstown has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 45 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Pottstown normally reaches 56° and falls to 35°. The record high is 75°, in 1955; the record low 19°, in 1950. The most rain on this date, 2.56 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Phoenixville 1 E, 12 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
