The Sandy Lake 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
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3.01 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1897. The next wettest, 2.84 inches, fell in 1927.
Sandy Lake’s center stands about 1,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,160 ft to 1,570 ft, a difference of 410 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Round Knob, about 1,640 ft, 14 miles north.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 34×. 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, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.3 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 Sandy Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of McCutcheon Run, Sandy Creek, the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,080 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 Sandy Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sandy Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 54 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Sandy Lake normally reaches 50° and falls to 32°. The record high is 72°, in 1912; the record low 10°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.54 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Franklin, 14 miles east-northeast, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
