The Somerset 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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13° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1935. Next is 17° in 2017.
Somerset’s center stands about 1,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 970 ft to 1,300 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Wheeler, about 1,490 ft, 10 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Waynesburg Formation (sandstone, shale), from the Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old.
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 28×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.9 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 Somerset reaches the Gulf of America by way of Center Branch Pigeon Creek, Pigeon Creek, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,990 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 Somerset; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Somerset has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. About 41 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Somerset normally reaches 52° and falls to 36°. The record high is 70°, in 2011; the record low 18°, in 1942. The most rain on this date, 0.54 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1935 at Pittsburgh Allegheny County Airport, 16 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
