The Southampton 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.
79° on Nov. 15, 2011, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1974. Next is 78° in 2020.
Southampton’s center stands about 1,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 890 ft to 2,230 ft, a difference of 1,340 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Martin Hill, about 2,790 ft, 5 miles north-northwest.
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 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Quartzite. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 2 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 Southampton reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Black Valley Branch, Town Creek and the Potomac: about 320 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Southampton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Southampton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 29 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Southampton normally reaches 54° and falls to 34°. The record high is 71°, in 1993; the record low 13°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.72 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1974 at Cumberland 2, 16 miles southwest, 540 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.