The Schuylkill 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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19° on Nov. 11, 2017, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1934. Next is 19° in 2019.
Schuylkill’s center stands about 1,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 810 ft to 1,580 ft, a difference of 770 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bears Head, about 2,090 ft, 6 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Llewellyn Formation (sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 14 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. 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, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, slate. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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. 8 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 Schuylkill reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Little Schuylkill, the Schuylkill and the Delaware: about 180 river miles.
100 miles of the trip are on the Schuylkill.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Schuylkill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Schuylkill has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 27 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 52 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1934 at Lehighton 1 SSW, 17 miles east, 740 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
