The Ronco 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.
79° on Nov. 16, 1987, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1951. Next is 79° in 2020.
Ronco’s center stands about 960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 760 ft to 1,250 ft, a difference of 490 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Devies Mountain, about 2,780 ft, 14 miles southeast.
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 12×. 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: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.6 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 Ronco reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,020 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 Ronco; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ronco has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 45 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1951 at Point Marion Lock 8, 10 miles south, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.