The Southwest 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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76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1954. Next is 71° in 1954.
Southwest’s center stands about 1,640 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,270 ft to 1,730 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jackson Hill, about 1,980 ft, 12 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pottsville Formation (sandstone, conglomerate), from the Carboniferous, 299 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 26×. 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 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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.
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 Southwest reaches the Gulf of America by way of Pine Creek, Oil Creek, the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,100 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 Southwest; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Southwest has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in February. A normal year brings about 89 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Southwest normally reaches 49° and falls to 29°. The record high is 69°, in 1989; the record low 11°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.42 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1954 at Titusville Water Works, 8 miles west-southwest, 420 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
