The Sidman 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.
74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1964. Next is 70° in 1964.
Sidman’s center stands about 1,660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,570 ft to 2,460 ft, a difference of 890 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blue Knob, about 3,140 ft, 10 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Casselman Formation (shale, clastic), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Shale, clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 0.5 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 Sidman reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Fork Little Conemaugh, the Little Conemaugh, the Conemaugh, the Kiskiminetas, the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,070 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 Sidman; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sidman has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 80 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 Sidman normally reaches 48° and falls to 29°. The record high is 69°, in 1994; the record low 5°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.74 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1964 at Ebensburg Sewage Plant, 10 miles north, 280 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.