The Rye 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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76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1840. Next is 74° in 2009.
Rye’s center stands about 550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 410 ft to 1,270 ft, a difference of 860 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Third Mountain, about 1,670 ft, 15 miles east-northeast.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 18×. 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 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone, mudstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 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. 6 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 Rye reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Fishing Creek and the Susquehanna: about 90 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rye; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rye has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 28 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1840 at Carlisle Water Plant, 10 miles southwest, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
