The Smethport 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 68° in 2012.
Smethport’s center stands about 1,490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,460 ft to 2,370 ft, a difference of 910 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Prospect Hill, about 2,460 ft, 3 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chadakoin Formation (siltstone, shale), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 20×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 4 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 Smethport reaches the Gulf of America by way of Marvin Creek, Potato Creek, the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,240 river miles.
Lake on the way: Allegheny Reservoir.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Smethport; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Smethport has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 55 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 43 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Port Allegany, 8 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
