The Sparta 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.
Sparta’s center stands about 1,450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,350 ft to 1,810 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jackson Hill, about 1,980 ft, 10 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Corry Sandstone through Riceville Formation, undivided (sandstone, 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 25×. 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, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.8 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 Sparta reaches the Gulf of America by way of East Branch Oil Creek, Oil Creek, the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,120 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 Sparta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sparta 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 Sparta 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, 13 miles south, 230 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
